Jun
29
by Josie Bannerman
This is a year of change for Luminara. The popular lantern festival that lit up Beacon Hill Park in summers past will show a different face in the city this year.
"This year, whole neighbourhoods will become the setting for Luminara," said Festival Director Karin Scarth. "It will be a different, quieter event, with more community involvement. It will be what people make of it." Luminara celebrations will take place in James Bay and Fairfield September 18-25.
The Inter-Cultural Association of Greater Victoria (ICA) continues to organize the Luminara Festival, as they have done for the past ten years. However, funding is hard to come by this year, and several significant funders are unable to continue to sponsor the event. Rather than scrap what has become a popular Victoria tradition, ICA is committed to leading a transition to a new community-based celebration. Here in James Bay, the Community School Society, New Horizons, the Community Project and the Royal BC Museum are all involved in the planning.
A wonderful aspect of Luminara in the past has been the unexpected moments of beauty and poetry that people come upon by chance, said Scarth. She expects that the new neighbourhood celebrations will provide many more opportunities for these personal moments of quiet beauty.
While it is still a little early for specifics, Scarth expects that lantern-making workshops will be held in James Bay during September in the days leading up to the festival. Children will have opportunities to make simple lanterns they can carry; and pending funding, Scarth hopes there will also be workshops for more complex lantern making where people can implement their own designs to decorate their homes and gardens.
If you decorate your home for the festival, you'll be able to pinpoint your location on a neighbourhood map at the community school. People will be able to consult the map and plan their own walks through the neighbourhood during the festival week to take in the sights. The Luminara Festival begins September 18 - James Bay Day - with lantern making in the afternoon, and a processional celebration through the streets of James Bay that evening. After that, it will be up to us. This year Luminara will be what we make of it!