Every community needs a lantern festival so we decided to organize a lantern festival in our neighbourhood. Inner Core Design's president, Paula Ng, wanted to have an annual event that applauded individual creativity in her community. To see the most recent lantern festival announcements click here.

What follows is documentation of planning the en"light"ening event. We had our first Starry Night Lantern Festival on March 19, 2005 from 6:30–8:30 pm.

The lantern festival was definitely magical despite the dreaded rain. Around 100 people showed up with their lanterns in the park. Lanterns were sheltered in tarped areas. A variety of local musicians and performers took stage during the night. Free hot chocolate was served by the Station 7 fire department...it was pretty fun. Here are some photos and video shots taken that Starry Night.

Wow, what a weekend! Here's a preview of the shadow puppets that were made for the kids' shadow show. The costume workshop was also this past weekend... Everyone came out with a new set of faery wings! Odd shaped head pieces were also constructed.

We held our first meeting in the park this past Sunday and discussed the route of the lantern procession and which areas would be ideal for the different types of events. Those events include a performance area, a 6 o'clock last minute lantern making table, a kids' shadow puppet show, a possible soundscape, art⁄lantern installations and the make–a–wish floating lantern set–up. The local fire department will provide hot chocolate.

The Dinghy Dock pub ferry will provide free one–way fares to the island for those who bring a lantern on the ferry.

A new verse to the Lantern News is out! 3 workshops were announced: 2 lantern making and 1 faery wing making.

The name for this year's lantern festival is 'Starry Night' – Protection Island Lantern Festival.

Paper lanterns were put up by bulletin boards around the island yesterday. It's coming soon...but what shall we name it? The top 3 choices are 'Starry Night' – Protection Island Lantern Festival, Protection Island Lantern Festival and 'Bringing Back the Light' – Protection Island Lantern Festival. Check back to see what was decided.

The buzz is all around, "Psst, everyone's making a cool lantern and bringing it down to Pirate's Park on March 19 between 6:30–8:30." If you are scrambling for ideas on how to make a lantern, check out some photos of cool lanterns made on the island.

16 future pioneers of the lantern festival met to discuss our plans for the event. The date of March 19 from 6:30–8:30pm was approved, a celebration of the Spring Equinox. Wonderful, creative ideas started to form as all of us talked about what we wanted at our lantern festival.

There will be many exciting surprises. Many of the planned events involve lantern installations that the entire community can add to throughout the night.

Inspiration was the goal of the first community meeting. The speaker was Dolly Hopkins, the artistic director of Public Dreams. Dolly is one of Paula Ng's artistic heroes and we were so thrilled she came to talk to our community.

She inspired us to dream about creating a community ritual with our own artists, musicians and performers based around light.

One particular story she told was of a group of young girls who asked her if they could dance in one of the Illuminares festivals. She connected the girls with a professional dancer who helped choreographed their first public performance at Iluminares. The girls have now grown up and are all professional dancers.