This year marked the second edition of a very spectacular festival! I missed the 2017 edition and barely made it to this year’s program! But fortunately I was able to go and tell of this, soon to be, yearly tradition: the LUZA, Algarve International Festival of Light, in Loulé!
Where is it?
The festival takes place around November in the city of Loulé, my hometown’s neighboring city and the largest parish in all of Algarve. Loulé is a very well developed city with a lot of landmarks and places to visit (which I intend on writing more about in the future) and it isn’t a stranger to citywide events like LUZA! Loulé also has music festivals and huge parties in a yearly basis! So it really is an awesome place to hold such an interesting event, with a lot of international participants!
Loulé
Largo Gago Coutinho 24, 8100-604 Loulé, Portugal
The Festival
LUZA is located all around the city, and, since last year, has invited a huge variety of artists from many different backgrounds, either national or international! The goals is for those artists to create videos/installations/performances that focus on light and public interaction, and this really is the main pull for the visitors. The art on display does not just stand out and look gorgeous on the (purposely) dim streets of Loulé, but it is also very inviting to interact with and discuss how it works and what it means!
Why you should go!
This festival was created by two organizations, ByBeau Studio and Eventors’ Lab, with the help of the Loulé town hall, as a mean of inviting the citizens and the tourists to enjoy the city on a low season, which is a very present problem in the whole region of Algarve. After the crowded summer a lot of cities in the south see a huge decline in activity, and is great to see projects like this actually aiming to help the movement around this times, although I must say the three day time frame is a bit quick, but regardless of that, LUZA has managed to invite so many great artists (national, international, younger, older, etc.) to show awesome work around a marvelous city at a walking distance!
It’s basically the greatest night walk you’ll get in Algarve!
The photos and the video used for this article can be found in the LUZA official gallery. Check it out!
The author
André Jesus
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