How Lumiere 2021 shone a light on all we’ve missed about Durham

Lumiere, the resplendent biennial spectacle that is due to take over Durham City this weekend, brings with it a renewed post-pandemic significance. 

With Durham resembling a ghost-town for the majority of the past 20 months, and the darkness of last November’s lockdown seeming to engulf the whole city, the exceptional contrast a festival of light promises to bring has created a noteworthy atmosphere of excitement. 

Since its inception in 2009, the festival has taken Durham’s intrinsic beauty to breath-taking new heights. Strikingly vivid projections of light onto some of the city’s most iconic buildings serve to remind us of how lucky we are to live and study among them. 

Speaking as a second year, Lumiere could not have come at a better time. Unfortunately, the white-washed walls of my college bedroom fell dramatically short of doing justice to the sheer aesthetic value of the city I had barely been able to step foot in.

Having sorely missed a Cathedral matriculation, the chance for a regular stroll along the cobbled straights of the Bailey, or the comfort of a routine daily walk through the marketplace and across Saddler Street on the way to lectures, I’m struggling to think of what could come as a better form of compensation, or a better way of taking in the character of these historic places. 

What some of this year’s installations spotlight, however, is not just the splendour of the buildings they will be projected upon, but the value of human connection, recognition and congregation. 

Dominik Lejman’s ‘When Today Makes Yesterday Tomorrow’ will be shown upon Clayport Library wall in Walkergate and will depict the shapes of human figures in negative contrast ‘exchanging greetings, hugging and shaking hands’. Spectators, assembled to watch in a way that would have been illegal this time last year, will no doubt be stricken by how something so casually caught on camera, something so second nature to these people of pre-2020, is still slowly emerging from the strange and unfamiliar experience of the pandemic. 

‘Scattered Light’ by Jim Campbell, which will be situated on the grounds of St Mary’s College, travels along the same vein. When stood before the exhibit, figures of urban commuters can be seen in motion within a grid consisting of 1600 LED lights. With train stations, buses and city streets having seen little more than desertion for the past year and a half, these images hold the potential to conjure up feelings of nostalgia for a time when such scenes would have depicted an undisputed aspect of everyday life. 

At times, it feels like the walk from my house in Neville’s Cross to Elvet Riverside could constitute a commute, especially at 8.30 in the morning. However, occasionally bumping into familiar faces and being among a throng of other students and locals going about their business has helped to reignite a sense of community in Durham, which gives installations such as ‘Scattered Light’ and ‘When Today Makes Yesterday Tomorrow’ a different sort of resonance. 

This year, Lumiere will give students and locals alike the chance to appreciate the cosy close-knit feel and spectacular natural beauty of Durham, which the pandemic cruelly denied them last winter. 

The exhibits previously mentioned are just two of the 37 that will illuminate the streets of Durham, each one demonstrating the vast creative talent of its artist and the way in which it is always possible to shed new light on a city with no less than a millennium of history behind it.