Scarborough Lights Illuminates the Yorkshire Coast as Festival Launches

The Scarborough Lights festival, a month-long celebration of light, art, and community, launches on Friday offering residents and visitors a host of spectacular, free, and affordable illuminations running through 21 December.

Laser Lights, Drone Displays and Illuminated Dinosaurs are just some of the elements featuring in this year's Scarborough Lights event which launches this weekend.

Landmark buildings around the town will be illuminated at night, there will be laser lights beaming from some of the area's highest points and boats in the harbour will be adding lights to their rigging as part of the festival.

Peasholm Lake Island will be all lit up, there will be and LED light tunnel on Westborough and local roundabouts will be transformed in to Dino-bouts with massive illuminated Dinosaurs taking them over.

From next Wednesday Scarborough Castle will be hosting a series of illuminated drone displays.

The overall aim of the installations is to integrate the environment into the experience. Scarborough Fair Director Julian Caddy noted the unique aerial perspective achieved by the planning:

"I'm wanting to frame Scarborough from the sky effectively because we've got lights in the sky on Peasholm Island, we've got lights in the sky from Oliver's Mount and we've got lights in the sky from the castle keep as well.

And of course down in the harbour we have ships a hoy. And shortly you'll see the the lighthouse lighting up and the toll house as well.

So it will be a wonderful collection of lighting that we wanted to to frame the town really".

A Deep Dive into Histories and Mysteries

One of the central opening features is Scarborough Histories & Mysteries, housed within St Mary’s Church and running until 14 December. This event is a collaboration between three local arts collectives, combining drawing, photography, and digital technology to celebrate the town’s heritage and the architectural beauty of the church.

Julian Caddy explained the components of the installation:

"Scarborough Histories and Mysteries is a collaboration between three local arts collectives. One is Photo Scarborough who are doing pinhole cameras. So people may not necessarily know this, but the photography of a certain age was pioneered in Scarborough . And so there's some photography of the style of when photography first began. There's a little video booth for people to to look at and enjoy that.

We then have animated objects with a triptych of projected images all the way down the nave and into the altar area of St. Mary's Church with beautiful music. You may hear that in the background.

We have a history of Scarborough also detailed using still and moving images and it's it beautifully fits with the architectural features of the church. So, it's very beautiful.

The third of the installations is called Tales from the Sea by Droma, which is a Victorian style peep show. And you put in a Doubloon into the machine and you'll be be able to see some curiosities happening in the old-fashioned way, but a little bit more slightly twisted, but very ornate and beautifully created peep show.

And it's all together in one exhibition".

Lee Threadgold from Animated Objects detailed the complexity of the large-scale projection, known as Triptych, which consists of three films. The installation required extensive work to map the church’s surface with just a single projector.

"It's a vast experiment in projection, this. Many people will be familiar with going to some of the bigger cities in the country and seeing these vast multi-projector setups on the outside of cathedrals. We had the resource of working with the church with just a single projector and working on how we could map the church's surface itself.

So we've spent months working with the team here. We projected grids onto the whole surfacing and then we had to hand draw the way we would frame and mask out each of the surfaces so that the videos land in the right place.

And for a single projector working from the very back of the space, we're absolutely thrilled with the results".

The three films cover the town’s history since prehistoric times, a celebration of the stained glass windows at St Mary's, and a modern version of the nativity. Lee says the creation process involved significant artistic effort.

"It's been literally hundreds and hundreds of hours of hand drawing. Every image that's seen in the in the first and the third films are hand drawn. And then we've used modern technology to bring some of those into key frame animation as well.

And the second film, the one in the middle, are all high resolution photos of the beautiful windows here at the church as well.

We wanted something that connects with the church as a venue. We wanted to celebrate Scarborough and its story. We wanted to just bring that to life and hopefully give those wow moments to people".

Scarborough Councillor Rich Maw was among those attending Thursday night's preview event at St Mary's he was blown away by what he saw.

"I was absolutely blown away by  that audio visual presentation by animated objects. I've never quite seen anything like it and watching it all the way through from the Jurassic coast and going forwards until 1626 came on, huge picture of of Mrs. Farrah and I thought, wow. My heart melted at that point.

We got married in St. Mary's church  our kids were christened in there, and then to see it in this extraordinary way as we just witnessed, never quite seen anything like it. Super proud of of Scarborough and and obviously of Scaborough Fair and Julian and his team they have absolutely done e expert work.

And to grow on that and to actually impress upon people that these things don't just happen. There's a whole lot of fundraising and things that go on. As an aside, I was very happy to see that we had a representation from the combined authority there.

We should be looking to that hopefully to try and impress upon those that can actually help introduce funding, whether it's seed funding or match funding, because we need to be able to deliver this and more"

Lights Across the Town

Several other key installations are illuminated from Friday and running until 21 December.

Visitors can enjoy the vibrant lights transforming Peasholm Island Illumination. Down in the harbour, the well-loved annual community activity Ships Ahoy! provides the sight of glittering, gleaming vessels of all sizes (fishing vessels, yachts, cruisers, and speed boats). The illumination of the Lighthouse is also part of this display.

In the town centre, Dino-bouts sees the dinosaurs on Vernon Road and Aquarium Top Roundabouts come alive. Visitors can also find a 9m x 5m LED Light Tunnel outside Poundland, which is free to enjoy. Creatures of the Deep transforms the Glass Box Gallery in St Helen’s Square into a giant illuminated fish tank, showcasing a dazzling collection of fantastical sea creatures.

Key historical landmarks are also being lit up externally. The keep of Scarborough Castle is specially illuminated and viewable from across the town every evening. Similarly, St Mary’s Church Exterior Illumination showcases the historic building. For those looking upwards, Sky Lights at Oliver’s Mount provides fabulous search lights from one of the most visible locations in town.

Drone Displays Set for Next Week

While the launch focuses on ground-based installations, attention is already turning to the skies for the brand new Drone Display at Scarborough Castle, scheduled to run from 19 – 23 November. The display will take the audience on a journey around the town with Thomasin Farrer and local schoolchildren, marking the town’s approach to its 400th anniversary as the UK’s first seaside resort. This display also offers a unique opportunity to view the Castle illuminations up close, and will be preceded by fire, light, and music performances, alongside food and drink stalls.

Supporting Sustainable Tourism

The festival is backed by the York and North Yorkshire Combined Authority, aiming to boost local engagement and economic sustainability. Chief Executive James Farrar expressed pride in the collaborative nature of the event:

"We've been incredibly proud to be able to work with the town, with the local people, with the local artists, and actually be able to support some of the activities such as tonight to really get the town going and and and get the communities engaged, but get people coming into Scarborough to hopefully come and see the quality of the place, spend a bit of money, put a bit of income into the town, but actually make it a year- round resort for what we're trying to achieve".

Mr Farrar emphasised that the collaboration between various brilliant individual efforts creates something truly spectacular:

"The sum of the whole is so much greater than the individual parts. So we have lots of brilliant people doing individually great things, but you bring them together in a collaborative way like we're we're doing at the moment and it's truly wonderful. Um and that's what we want to achieve.

So so the more we can support collaboration, the more we can support people coming together to create something that that really creates something spectacular for for Scarborough and for the coast, the better we'll be and the more sustainable it will be. And it will then it will create momentum. It will then attract sponsorship. It will get more visitors and it'll become more and more sustainable. So So you know what you say is absolutely right and it's all about that collaboration. It's about the place coming together and being loud and being proud and being Scarborough".

Many of the events are either free or operating  pay what you can policy but some events such as the drone display do have an entry fee. There are more details at https://scarboroughfair.uk/lights/