Prism: Light Trail

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Prism: Waterside Arts’ inaugural winter festival of music and light will illuminate Sale town centre this November

Prism - a new and ambitious winter festival, powered by Waterside Arts, will light up Sale town centre in Trafford from Thursday 23 November to Saturday 25 November.

Fusing music, projection, light and performance this three-day festival across the town centre will create magical and thought-provoking experiences for all ages, launching this year’s festive season from its cultural heart and leading arts hub, Waterside.

At the centre of the fun and running until the end of the year will be a Winter Light Trail.  Featuring an array of originally designed light installations positioned throughout the town, the trail will run daily from dusk til dawn brightening up the dark winter nights.

This is a community-led project, curated by Things That Go On Things, in partnership with Leeway Creative Production and Trafford-based public artist Venessa Scott.  Children and young people from the borough are invited ahead of the festival to work with Venessa and participate in drop-in creative workshops at Sale Library where they will work together to create their own installations for the Light Trail. (see notes for dates)

Outdoor art and light also come together over the Prism Festival weekend in Sentinel – a multi-sensory performance of electronic music from composer Richard Evans, based on his critically-acclaimed album of the same name. Running each evening during the festival, Sentinel uses light and projections across the Sale Waterside building, together with pulsating electro-pop, lush synths and contemporary vibes.

They will sync with lighting effects, generative art and motion typography in a compelling free, outdoor show to create an immersive, large-scale visual work and a call-to-action in response to the planet's most urgent issue - climate change. Synthpop hooks are interspersed with spoof news breaks in a blend of sound, light and video that finds hope in a world changing beyond our control.

Concluding the performance element of Prism is Surge 360 – an indoor immersive dance piece where artist Tom Dale brings to life a duet between dancer and an animated light in a gripping kinesthetic relationship creating a bridge between the digital and organic worlds.

This 25 minute show – featuring live vocals from performer Jemima Brown and digital design by Vent Media - runs three times on Saturday 25 November and is performed in the round, enabling audiences to be fully immersed into the digital landscape and get up close to the dancer.  

Image credit: Jason Lock and Alice Underwood