At the start of the year, over one million people turned out to see Lumiere London transform the heart of the capital closed to traffic and transformed by light installations from a host of groundbreaking international artists.

Later in the year in September, we commemorated the 350th anniversary of the Great Fire of London with London’s Burning. This festival of arts and ideas comprised six individual art works ranging from Holoscenes, an underwater performance warning of the threat of climate change, to Dominoes by Station House Opera – 23,000 breezeblock dominoes that toppled one-by-one, retracing the advance of the fire through the winding streets of the City. The festival culminated with the burning of London 1666, a vast sculpture of 17th-century London designed by American artist David Best and constructed by young people from five boroughs adjacent to the City of London that was set alight on the Thames as millions watched live online around the world.

From our earliest beginnings presenting The Sultan’s Elephant by Royal de Luxe in 2006, to Antony Gormley’s One & Other commission for the Fourth Plinth, Deborah Warner and Fiona Shaw’s Peace Camp, Lumiere festivals in Durham, Derry~Londonderry and London, through to the iconic Templeback in Derry in 2015, we have transformed places, expectations, experiences and people. Not for us the private world of the dedicated arts space – we are, and will firmly remain, out there in the public domain, working with artists to imagine a new world we’d all like to live in.

We’re looking forward to the fifth Lumiere in Durham, returning to the city from 16th-19th November 2017, and work has already begun on a major new project for 2018.