Birmingham Light Festival will brighten up the dark winter nights from 19–22 Feb 2025
From 19–22 Feb 2025, Birmingham Light Festival will transform a series of city centre locations into a spectacular gallery of illuminated artworks, in what will become an annual multi-day event.
Encouraging Birmingham residents and visitors to explore and see the city in a different light, installations and artworks will bring the post-Christmas winter nights to life.
Aiming to create a sense of playful curiosity and spark joy, Birmingham Light Festival 2025 features 11 extraordinary artworks, all within walking distance of each other, encouraging visitors to come together and explore the city. 3 of the illuminated artworks will even remain in place after the festival, as we seek to brighten city centre spaces progressively over time.
The Festival will be brought to life with an accompanying programme of events and offers.
Credits
Birmingham Light Festival is a City Curator Project, a role fully funded by Colmore BID. It is being made possible with thanks to the full support of all five city-centre BIDs. OPUS are the producers of Birmingham Light Festival. You can read more about the team working on Birmingham Light Festival here.
A BID is a partnership of local businesses that work together to improve a specific area.
Origin
All great ideas have to start somewhere, and the seed of the idea of Birmingham Light Festival began to truly grow with the delivery of a test event in March 2024. Alex Nicholson-Evans (City Curator), Outdoor Places Unusual Spaces and Colmore BID joined forces to bring a dazzling mirror ball installation to the city centre. Our Beating Heart popped up in Snow Hill Square between Thurs 21 to Sat 23 March. This giant heart-shaped mirror ball relected natural light during the day, and as the sun set, it will transformed the space with fantastical dancing lights and an eye-catching wash of colour. Visitors to Our Beating Heart were invited to share their thoughts and that insight informed our thinking and planning of the festival that will debut in Feb 2025. You can read more about this part of the Birmingham Light Festival journey here.