Tens of thousands expected as First Light Festival Returns to Celebrate Midsummer
There'll be performances from musicians, comedians and poets as they celebrate midsummer.
This weekend, Lowestoft will once again come alive with colour, creativity, and community as the First Light Festival returns to the UK’s most easterly town.
"Genevieve Christie is the chief executive of First Light Festival CIC. She helped launch the event in 2019 and has watched it grow into a major celebration of arts and culture on the Suffolk coast.
About the event
“First Light Festival is all about celebrating Midsummer in the most easterly place in the country, which is Lowestoft,” she explained. “And it's a multi-arts festival.”
Now in its fifth year, the two-day celebration features everything from live music to hands-on workshops, and it all kicks off with a vibrant beach parade including the Marina Theatre Samba Band. Christie explained they're going to have "a wonderful parade that comes down from somewhere called the East Point Pavilion down onto the beach in Lowestoft,” said Christie. “People will have been making wonderful sort of headdresses and things to carry for weeks, for months.”
One of the festival’s signature events is Welcome the Light, a specially commissioned performance that begins on the main Sunlight Stage. “That is a real community sort of endeavour,” Christie explained. “We commission a new piece of music every year. And this year we've commissioned a new sea shanty… working with schools, with community groups, with local choirs to co-curate a new work and then they all come together to perform it at the festival.”
County Collaboration
With the festival expanding each year, Christie says she’s proud to no longer be juggling every role alone. “When we started First Light in 2019, you know, I was doing absolutely everything… I’m so pleased that I don’t have to kind of do absolutely everything,” she laughed. “We have a small core team and then we have a fantastic large team and about 150 volunteers as well.”
The festival has also become a catalyst for collaboration across Suffolk. “First Light Festival has really developed through partnership working,” said Christie. “Over the years, those partners do sort of work with each other, develop ideas together… there’s quite a lot of crossover and development of ideas and that works really well.”
She pointed to Planet Positive, a zone dedicated to environmental issues and innovation, as one example. “Our partners in there… the Natural History Museum, an organisation called Cfast… the University of East Anglia and Norwich Astronomical Society, and this year also the Kitty Wake organisation,” she said. “We have been meeting for months and months… it's been fantastic.”
Economic Impact
We asked Christie what benefits the festival has on the local economy, she said it has a "very positive result."
"We have lots of food traders and all of the bed and breakfasts and accommodation are full for the weekend. And then I think it has a longer-term impact as well because it gives an injection of confidence into a place, and people will come back. And I think in the sort of cultural tourism sort of space, it puts Lowestoft on the map."
And her final message ahead of the big weekend? “Just come along and have a really lovely weekend at First Light this weekend.”