Luminate 2025

The Spiral Artists were part of Luminate '25, another lovely community event organised by Friends of Derby Arboretum. We had the trees lit up, a lantern procession around the Arboretum, a fire eater, a drumming circle, and hot refreshments served by St Thomas's church.

A lovely evening of communities together.

Chinese New Year - Year of the Pig

We spent a week working at Erewash Museum in Ilkeston creating artwork for Chinese New Year.
We worked with a number of schools from the local area, Bennerley School, Chaucer School, Stanton Common School and Brackenfield School. We made red strip lanterns and money purses decorated with pig designs.
On the Saturday we had a busy afternoon working with families creating lanterns with cellophane and LED lights for the procession held at Dallimore School in Kirk Hallam. It was a great session with around 100 people attending.

Luminate Lantern & Light Festival 2016

On Saturday 5 November 2016 5pm - 8pm, Friends of Derby Arboretum, Spiral Arts, Rotary Club of Derby and Derby City Council Parks are hosting a Lantern Festival on the historic Derby Arboretum as part of its community celebrations.

We are celebrating the park in its anniversary year of being open to the public for 175 years.  We are inviting the local communities and people of Derby to come along and join us for this wonderful evening Lantern event.

The event will start around 5pm with people gathering at the Orangery in the Arboretum. There will be a simple lantern activity for people to take part in while everyone gathers for the procession. We have a Morris Dance performance from ‘Chip off the Old’ starting off the celebrations at the Orangery.

The procession will begin at 5.40pm leaving the Orangery and processing around the park accompanied by magical music from violinist, Helen Hitchcock and a Morris dance performance at the fountain. Weather permitting, there will be illuminations displayed in the trees around the park and the fountain. We will return to the Orangery to warm up with hot soup and rolls and more magical music and dancing. Grove Lodge and the Orangery building will be decorated with lights and lanterns.

The lanterns will be on display in the Orangery until Friday 11^th November.

If you would like to make a lantern see our 'park workshops' page for details of our free lantern making workshops in half term.