This week I went to a meeting for this years Light Night event. What’s great about Light Night is that it attracts a large and diverse range of opened minded people who are up for a good time. We held the Klanging Banging launch on Light Night because there was already a large audience out and about in Leeds. A problem we had to overcome was attracting people down from the city centre to the south side of Leeds to see it. We did this by marketing it really well quite early on with posters and flyers and an interview on BBC Radio Leeds in the week leading up to it. On Light Night there were orange balloons to mark the trail that linked the four pieces together.

I have a couple of ideas for this years event. One would be to fix many of my Dream Dish sculptures to buildings around the city centre. I think the budget could cover materials and technician fees for fitting them. It should also be quite easy approaching company buildings to fix them onto because of it being linked to Light Night and LCC and because I was part of it last year doing another outdoor public piece. I could approach KPMG who let me use their property last time. This would be a good place for views because it gets thousands of people walking and driving past it everyday with it being “the gateway to the city” and the dark arches installation should be complete by then as well.

Another idea is to do projections out of windows. The town hall has a row of windows at head height on street level that would be perfect for a multi-screen video installation. I’m not sure if the budget could cover the hiring of 5 or more projectors, but I could either down size the idea or apply for a Arts Council grant.

I’m going to hire one this week and project it out of my bedroom window in Leeds, just as an experiment. As far as engaging with audiences, it’s probably not the best location. It’ll mainly be people driving or walking to and from work who may not look up and see it. Howver, it’s quite near PSL so there is a chance of catching the eye of someone who may appreciate it.

My friends have developed this idea by planning to do it out of their front room in Hyde Park and put a bench in the front garden so people can sit and watch. The videos will consist of us engaging with it’s environment and community. Yesterday, Adam made a 10m rope ladder which came out of the skylight and down the front of the house which he then climbed up. This was an interesting and exciting performance which got a lot of attention from people walking past. This climb worked better than a later one in a tree because there was no audience apart from those involved and some deer.