Festival’s last lights illuminate the City of Durham

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times – so starts Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities. And in a situation replicated around the country, the small North East city of Durham, home to the popular and innovative Lumiere light festival, is also, half-unbelievably to many involved, coming to the end of a hugely successful public art exhibition that has been run every other year since 2009.

The story will come as no surprise to those working, even in passing, with public art projects and broader public funding. The coffers are empty, and everything is going up in price. Sadly, it isn’t even like-for-like expenses, but also newer, more complex funding commitments. Lumiere thrillingly illuminates Durham’s old city centre, which is part of both its charm and its danger. Public liability and private security, as well as compulsory increased police presence, following domestic and international terrorist attacks in recent years, have swollen the running costs to almost four times what it was when it started.

This is a great shame and disappointment, not just for regular attendees, for whom there are thousands, but also for the local children and families who have grown up with the event their whole lives. It is a devastating blow, too, for Artichoke, which has regarded Lumiere as its most consistent project for more than a decade and a half. The celebrated team ran the event in London for a couple of editions, but the general feeling was that the site was too spread out and competed with too many other distractions. In Durham, the biennale has been a cultural beacon and lighthouse in mid-November.

The 2026 edition featured several returning light artists and some first-time exhibitors. In a nod to concerns about overcrowding in the city centre, there was also a fringe exhibition in Shildon, about 25 minutes’ drive away. The small County Durham town was the world’s first railway town, and hosts the appropriately named Locomotion museum. This year marks the two hundredth anniversary of the town’s railway station being built.

But back to the city. The excitement and joy of seeing unusual forms, of exploring unknown streets, or for those more familiar with the site, seeing known places afresh – that is the essence of Lumiere. Like any public art intervention, there are the naysayers and those frustrated by road closures and extended delays, but Artichoke has amassed some incredible statistics in the realisation of this project. Some 14,000 community participants have contributed to learning projects over the period. 1.3 million visitors have come to County Durham for the event. The overall economic impact has been estimated at more than £43m, including hotels, restaurants, shopping, and taxis, all of which the festival helps bring to the area.

With all this impact, it’s easy to side with the disbelievers – how can this not carry on? As it stands, the compromise is positive. Stakeholders are to discuss over the following years, how to build on the legacy of this extraordinary season. How to reimagine what this festival could look like, and how to fund and manage it in the future.

As with any temporary exhibition, it is pertinent to question the ongoing impact of an event that lights up and then goes dark. In that regard, the city accepted a few pieces on a permanent basis back in 2021. Lampounette by France’s TILT is a giant-sized desk lamp: a perfect posing prop for a top-lit portrait. On the banks of the River Wear, which was itself this year, dangerously high and close to bursting following heavy rain upstream, stands Heron by John Voss, also from France. The bird did well to stay lit up – there were two or three pieces that had to be shut down for safety and public access reasons during the stormy weather.

Possibly most appealing to the design community, you can read the time on a nearby wall in words. The Helvetictoc, also online here by Tobie Langel from Switzerland, is a projection made with the eponymous font, which writes the time conversationally.

This year was marred by heavy rains, and it was disappointing to miss a few pieces because of the challenging logistics. Despite this, attendance was still high, and the atmosphere remained largely undampened. The biennial previewed two new commissions and works never seen in Durham before. Also, some very popular interactive works, attracting children and adults alike to manipulate outdoor display screens by Iregular, As Water Falls, 2025, and Point of (No) Return, 2025, by Anastasia Isachen from Canada and Norway, respectively.

Light is an extraordinary medium. Art has tried to capture it for millennia, with the transience of Lumiere lasting just three evenings, and many of these pieces unseeable or unremarkable in the light of day, it is especially fitting for Durham that its Norman cathedral, famed itself for close to a thousand years, plays host to several of the other exhibits. The UK’s Jigantic presented Elysium Garden, a field of giant glowing flowers and fantastical plants gently sweeping through a rainbow of colours. Inside, under Gothic and Romanesque architectural features, looking up from the nave, people were treated to Nighthouse Studio’s Everyone Ever projections, which, like the illuminated flora outside, also came with an accompanying soundtrack.

Closer and brighter, UK artist Amelia Kominsky’s cloister intervention saw hundreds of handmade glowing lanterns suspended through medieval stone arches. Introduced in Lumiere’s programme, Solace, 2025, invites witnesses to imagine the journeys of these lanterns and, by extension, to think of their own. Something County Durham will need to do itself to continue with its firmly established connection with light art, and whatever this popular light festival evolves into.