{"id":42413,"date":"2026-07-30T03:03:43","date_gmt":"2026-07-30T02:03:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.creativeireland.gov.ie\/event\/longford-lights-2026\/"},"modified":"2026-07-30T03:03:43","modified_gmt":"2026-07-30T02:03:43","slug":"longford-lights-2026","status":"publish","type":"event","link":"https:\/\/www.creativeireland.gov.ie\/en\/event\/longford-lights-2026\/","title":{"rendered":"Longford Lights 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This year\u2019s festival embraces a joyful spirit of playfulness, captured in the theme <em>Lightly Playful<\/em>. It is a family-focused celebration, filled with colour and imaginative artworks, many of which have been created by the community. Two of the installations are inspired by simple childhood folded paper toys, paper boats and pinwheels, evoking the innocence and simple pleasures of childhood. While you can\u2019t play with these toys directly, you\u2019re invited to bring both your child and your inner child to the Bridge Club carpark, where you can play freely with shadows and light. Running throughout the Connolly Barracks site is a unifying thread of <em>Stitching the Barracks<\/em>, binding the festival together through light, texture, colour, and stitch.<\/p>\n<p>Continuing these childhood references, the ball alley projection draws heavily on granny squares, an age-old craft practiced by both young and old and not usually associated with digital media. This projection weaves together many of the community projects, incorporating imagery from the <em>Moment by Moment<\/em> project and yarn bombing, and linking them through the movement of cyclists from the <em>Glow on the Go Parade<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Take a walk through town to the main off-site location at Breaden\u2019s Lane, entered via Pig Market Lane. Here you\u2019ll discover an illuminated <em>Wanderland<\/em>, loosely inspired by Alice in Wonderland. Along the way, pause to experience <em>Glory<\/em> at St John\u2019s Church , illuminations in Garvey\u2019s Lane and <em>Let the World Spin<\/em> at Providers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":42414,"template":"","class_list":["post-42413","event","type-event","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v25.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Longford Lights 2026 - Creative Ireland Programme<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"This year\u2019s festival embraces a joyful spirit of playfulness, captured in the theme Lightly Playful.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.creativeireland.gov.ie\/en\/event\/longford-lights-2026\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Longford Lights 2026 - Creative Ireland Programme\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This year\u2019s festival embraces a joyful spirit of playfulness, captured in the theme Lightly Playful. 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