CITY residents got on their bikes for a unique evening parade as part of The Arches Festivals’ Light Night Worcester.
The participants toured the neighbourhoods of Dines Green, Warndon and Ronkswood lighting up the streets with bikes decorated with lights and bringing a special surround sound composition to the families watching from their windows and outside their homes for an arts project by Luke Jerram called Lullaby.
The surround sound composition was created through workshops led by composer Andy Taylor with Worcester Community Trust Choir, Poet Fouzia Begum and around 100 pupils from Perry Wood Primary School and Dines Green Community Academy.
Emma Grace, deputy headteacher at Dines Green Community Academy said: “Dines Green is a fantastic school to be part of. We take every opportunity to develop our children’s creativity and being involved with Light Night Worcester, through the Lullaby Project, was really exciting.
“Our children were so proud of the composition they helped to create and it was amazing to watch the parade of bikes travel through our wonderful community.”
Lullaby was created with children and young families in mind, encouraging our communities to be a part of something active, uplifting and feel a part of the Light Night festival. Worcester Community Trust worked closely with the Festivals team with each of their community hubs in these areas acting as the
Lullaby Worcester Start and Finish points, as well as many of their members taking part in the parade itself.
Elaine Knight, arts director for Severn Arts said: “We are really proud to be offering opportunities for people to take part in a number of different ways.
“Our festivals simply couldn’t happen without the involvement of local people. Bringing high quality artists to the city is the key to the programme’s success but we also want the residents of Worcester to feel part of it. From our volunteers, to audience members and with Lullaby participants themselves.”
The Lullaby events were supported by Bike Worcester who provided marshals, the University of Worcester Woo bike scheme who provided some electric bikes so that people without access to a bike could still take part and Light Night Worcester sponsor CityFibre.
Neal Wright, CityFibre’s city manager for Worcester said: “It was fantastic to be able to take ‘Lullaby’ out to so many outlying villages and to give children and their parents, a magical night-time experience, that they will remember for a very long time.
• Visit www.thearchesworcesterfestivals.co.uk/lullaby for more photos and a film about the project.
