Light The Blue

Light The Blue is our annual multi-artform festival celebrating the creativity of young people aged 5-25 across Aberdeen and beyond. Created for young people, by young people 2023’s festival takes place over the course of eight days across Aberdeen city centre with an electrifying line up of theatre, dance, film, music and more.

Light The Blue showcases the best of what the region and beyond has to offer from our vibrant and inspiring young creatives. From events dedicated to family audiences, for teenagers and emerging creatives, there’s something for everyone at this year’s festival. Join us for a week of inspirational activity across our stages and beyond!

Light the Blue 2023 took place over eight exciting days in June.  The festival featured 23 events, seven venues, nine stages and one exhibition. Over 800 young participants joined in with over 3,500 attending the performances. The festival brought together 30 of the best youth arts organisations from Aberdeen, Inverness, Edinburgh, Glasgow and as far afield as Wisconsin, USA.

Our audiences had some fantastic words to say about the festival:

• “The children worked hard and performed really well.”
• “Can’t wait for next year! Keep up the amazing work!”
• “It needs to continue long into the future. The benefit and value to future generations is immeasurable”
• “I really enjoyed seeing the confidence of the young people”
• “I most enjoyed seeing how much young people were enjoying themselves – beaming faces!”

Schools

We committed to engaging with young people who don’t have access to regular creative activity. We ran three school projects and partnerships as part of Light the Blue 2023:

• Snappy Operas with Mahogany Opera to four Aberdeen primary schools
• Class Act with the Traverse Theatre to deliver their flagship new writing education programme with five Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire secondary schools
• The World Through My Eyes with Orchard Brae ASN School and artists Saffron Gillies and Jenny Hood exploring how young people with additional support needs navigate the world.

Partnerships

We formed and built key partnerships with cultural organisations across Aberdeen and beyond and this formed the cornerstone of the festival

• North East Scotland College delivered an action-packed day of activities celebrating pathways into the music industry and emerging talent across music and drama.
• Scottish Culture and Traditions Youth, Aberdeen Jazz Youth, Aberdeen Music Service and Big Noise Torry to present the Big Gig, an event showcasing the musical talent on young people.
• Citymoves Dance Agency were involved in several events across the programme and will always be a key ambition for future festivals.

Youth Theatre projects

Leading children’s theatre company, Visible Fictions, set a series of tasks for the Aberdeen Performing Arts Youth Theatre groups and Citymoves’ Fusion Youth Dance company to create new pieces of work to be performed at the Fuse events.

Light the Blue will return from 8th – 16th June 2024 with to celebrate the young creatives from the region and beyond – we’ll see you there!

At Light the Blue 2023, we worked with Mahogany Opera on a project to create a series of performances that were performed at the festival. Learn more about the process we undertook and the fantastic results we achieved!