Sundays Parade
Each year the festival celebrates our journey and time together with a singularly spectacular lantern parade.  The Parade is the sole event in the festival where performers, audience and crew come together under the brilliance of light and unity, symbolizing and endorsing our shared experience and common aspirations.  By Sunday barriers have dropped and elevated spirits are at the fore with the Parade offering the perfect conditions for gay un-abandon and joyous celebration!

LightnUp
Lanterns, fire & outdoor celebration are deeply embedded in many cultures from China, Japan, Burma, and Vietnam to Europe and Africa with the lantern representing a positive metaphor for community optimism and hope throughout the world.  It was from this tradition that LightnUp was born and the universal and multicultural theme makes the lantern parade appealing to people from all walks of life and nationalities. Traveling light-workers, LightnUp, have been working around Australia as community artists, event producers and performers for over ten years now. They work with light and shadow, illuminated sculptures, lanterns and fire art and have been creating and conducting the well-known and loved Lismore Lantern Parade since 1994 in response to community concerns about antisocial behaviour and economic decline in Lismore's CBD. They have a strong commitment to social action and the environment which is reflected in their community cultural development work and the themes in their artwork and performance. Lismore Lantern Parade is also seen by local artists and performers as a way for the community to honour the cycles of the seasons in an authentic, contemporary celebration. 
LightnUp runs workshops and activities throughout the year, in Lismore, the Northern Rivers and throughout regional Australia. The workshops and events include lantern making, shadow theatre, illuminated puppets, masks and costume making, and story development and they are well loved by children from 8 to 80 years. www.lanternparade.com or festival@nrg.com.au

Jyllie Jackson and her fabulous LightnUp crew will be running their highly popular workshops and parade at the festival again this year.  Bookings for festival lantern workshops are essential and will be taken 6pm on Friday so please register if you would like your child to participate. Places must be booked due to its tremendous popularity.  

Saturday
Lantern Making
9.00am - 11.30am 25 places
Lantern Decorating 12.00 - 1.00pm 30 places
Lantern Making 1.30pm - 4.00pm 25 places

Sunday
Lantern Making
9.00am - 11.30am 25 places
Lantern Decorating 12.00 - 1.00pm 30 places
Lantern Decorating 1.30 - 2.30pm 30 places

Percussion workshops for Sunday night’s Parade. Sat/Sun 10am – Bazaar stage.
Matt Ledgar grew up in this area and cut his teeth on percussive instruments. Having developed and honed his skills locally, Matt hit the road at the ripe old age of 15 and toured Australia with the Peace Train, playing percussion with the band Dreamtime. Later, he became a founding member of the much loved Kangaroo Moon and was consequently mentored by Greg Sheehan who he played alongside in the popular percussive and theatrical outfit, Utungun Percussion, a band that incorporated traditional sounds from Polynesia, Indonesia, Africa, South America, USA and China. Since that time Matt has not looked back, touring Europe and Asia extensively and in more recent years, founded Hybrid Percussion and designed and patented his own percussive instrument called the Percusso, the first of its type to combine the sounds of tambourine and clave (wood block) into a single instrument which was recently showcased on the New Inventors.  The Percusso.

Matt and Greg Sheehan  have worked together for the past 13 years developing a system of rhythm training using numbers  and at this years festival Matt will be conducting percussion workshops on Sat and Sunday mornings for all of you wishing to participate in the percussive side of the Parade.