After Bornholm we drove through Sweden and Germany (via the Mosel Valley) to Wiltz in Luxembourg, to take part in the Nuit des Lampions festival. Bryan Tweddle, our neighbour from Sowerby Bridge, had invited us to be a part of this year’s event. We arrived not knowing quite how we would fit in and make ourselves useful! ‘Cooperations‘ is an amazing community made up of people with learning difficulties and the long-term unemployed, and it didn’t take us long to make friends with the artist group here and come up with ideas for a performance together.
We created 2 sets of shadow shows for the festival, one with the artist group using shadow masks that they had made before our arrival, and one to mark the clock chimes during the evening, which we performed with the help of the lead art workers of the organisation. It was an absolute privilege to work alongside all the people here, and to enjoy the beautiful buildings, garden and artwork that they have created.
- The gorgeous sculpted gardens
- Bryan Tweddle showing us lanterns from previous years
- Bryan and Ian building their lantern clock tower in the rain. Meanwhile, we cut paper puppets inside.
- Some of the artists puppets; this one was a lonely gorilla.
- Ferno and one of his amazing assemblage pieces
- One of our favourite puppets we made
- One of many great site installations
- Lantern lizard–how great is that?
- The stage they built for our shadow show–what a crew!
- The happy puppeteers