Every winter Amsterdam lights up for the worldwide famous yearly Light festival. Since 2012, the Amsterdam Light Festival has showed over 200 art works, and now it is one of Europe’s principal light art festivals. It is always a very successful event, showcasing artwork from national and international artist.
Every year it is presented with a theme. In 2019 the theme was called “disrupted”, The light festival of 2019 was from 28 November until 19 January of 2020 and it included 25 spectacular light sculptures especially created for this light art exhibition in the canals of Amsterdam. But this year is like no other, as Covid-19 changed our lives. Therefore, for the 9th edition of the festival, there will be a corona-proof walking experience via WhatsApp.
During the Light Walk, visitors will walk through the Eastern part of the city centre of Amsterdam and receive messages, videos, audios, and pictures. It will be interactive and adapted to different tastes, historical or artistic oriented.
The experience will show the visitors the light art, the city and especially the nature of Amsterdam, because this year’s theme is called “’When Nature Calls”. It is a 2 km route that runs through the Plantage and Weesperbuurt. To ensure that it is a Corona-proof experience along the route it has been taken into account by the organizers the space that the visitors need so it is necessary to book a time-slot to begin the route which is a one-way traffic route filled with amazing light art.
This year, The Light walk will be run from the 10th of December of 2020 until the 03 of January of 2021 from 17:00 to 23:00 (till 20:00 New Year’s Eve).
The Amsterdam Light Festival is held on the canals in the inner city and the Amstel river. It starts from Central Station and goes through some of the most picturesque and historic waterways of East Amsterdam such as: Oosterdok, Oudeschans, the Amstel River, Nieuwe Keizersgracht! Plantage Muidergracht and, finally Entrepotdok.
During the festival, the visitors can vote for their favourite light installation. The public choice award is awarded to the creator of the winning installation in the last weekend of the festival.
After the exhibition is over, part of the works created specifically for Amsterdam become part of a permanent collection that travels around the world.