The night is rising: How magical stories and new animism influence winter tourism light trails

The Night is Rising: How magical stories and new animism influence winter tourism light trails

This paper makes an original contribution to tourism research by examining how nature enhances technological immersion in the context of animism at winter light trails. The study offers an original view on light festival literature by taking into account their more-than-human, natural features such as local wildlife, the forests in which these events take place and the skyscapes above the event. A theoretical framework is provided by conceptualising ‘new animism’ (Ingold, 2006; MacFarlane, 2019) which suggests that the technological immersion of light trails is shaped around and by the spirits of place, those guardians of the natural world.

Light trails are popular visitor attractions. They are often used during the winter months in cities, or the grounds of historic properties, to extend the tourist season, disperse visitors and attract new audiences to historic and natural sites. They are designed to be immersive phenomena, illuminating overlooked aspects of locations to bring the night to life for visitors. The study extends the work of Lovell and Griffin (2022) who explored how enchantment is produced by light installation designers using folkloric narratives. This work expands on this idea by negotiating the influence of animism in 70’s children’s magical literature series The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper and Alan Garner’s The Owl Service on the creators of these trails.

The methodology combines autoethnographic reflections on visits to light trails captured during the winter of 2022-23 while reading Cooper and Garner, with semi-structured interviews conducted with the creative designers of light trails in early 2023, which was examined using thematic analysis. The light trails examined include Green Space: Dark Skies, a national project, part of the UK Unboxed Festival. Thousands of participants used hand-held lights in conjunction with drones to illuminate the dusk in the four highest mountains of the United Kingdom. The study also explores the Christmas Lights trails staged by the organisation Culture Creative at Leeds Castle and Bedgebury Pinetum in Southern England. Lastly, National Trust property Anglesey Abbey in the East of England is the site of a multi-layered event based on The Lost Words book of spell-songs by Robert MacFarlane and Jackie Morris, which is about animism. These diverse events offer a variety of scenarios in different locations, National Trust properties to mountains.

Two main themes have emerged from the analysis to shape the discussion: designed and undesigned nature. Examples of undesigned nature include the movement of wind altering the effect of acoustics and the contribution of cold temperatures. Organisers and designers discuss the effects of clear skies, birds, bats corridors, badger baffles, full moons, frosty ground on the presence and atmosphere of the events. The draws attention to the focus placed on the sky above the trail, which serves as a larger mirror of the lights below, leading to animistic reflections on dark skies and the reverse gaze. Designers also discuss their sensitivities to the welfare on wildlife. These findings address a gap in our knowledge about the undesigned, natural world as an animistic, active contributor to light installations.

The findings reveal the awareness of lighting designers about animism and their respect for the environment, which is often informed by their childhood reading of seminal fantasy fiction. This in turn leads to constructions of “designed nature,” for example the positioning of installations by water to double spatial effects and defamiliarise environments by changing their dimensions. Other designed forms of nature include soundscapes rich with night calls, rustles and activities that disorientate by suggesting that the darkness is alive with unseen creatures. Finally, the projections of trees and animals, often onto trees and natural surfaces creates a double effect of nightlife that sees and is seen, on occasion by the animals they strive to depict.

Ingold, T. (2006) Rethinking the animate, re-animating thought. Ethnos, 71(1), pp.9-20.Lovell, J. and Griffin, H. (2022) Unfamiliar light: the production of enchantment. Annals of Tourism Research, 92, p.103328.

MacFarlane (2019) Should this tree have the same rights as you. Accessed on 17 April 2023 at 18:40 from https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/nov/02/trees-have-rights-too-...