Write a post about a festival you’ve never been to they said, it’ll be fun they said. I’d rather be sleeping right now.

Let’s get down to business, dear readers. I was tasked with the opportunity to write about Nuit Blanche, which lots of my friends have attended in 2015, but which I have absolutely no experience with.

If you haven’t heard of it before, you shouldn’t be too surprised, as it’s fairly new to Edmonton and area. Though the festival has been active since 2002. Formed in the city of Paris, France under the direction of Jean Blaise, founder of the Centre de recherche pour le developpement culturel (Research Center for Cultural Development), Nuit Blanche is an annual all-night AKA “night-time” artists festival that begins in the evening and carries through to the following morning.

The goal of the festival is to attract people to the streets and buildings of a concentrated area, allowing local businesses to participate in and support the display of all kinds of art works. Since the first event was successful, the idea has slowly expanded to be featured in over 120 cities across the world – Paris, Brussels, Rome, Madrid, Riga, Bucharest, and Valletta to name a few. In Europe, several of these capital cities work together to share and exchange ideas and artists, keeping up with the theme of community.

Canada of course is not one to shy away from opportunities to support the arts, and has slowly integrated each of it’s capital cities and major urban centres into the mix. Edmonton hosted it’s first Nuit Blanche last year on Saturday September 26th in Edmonton’s downtown. It had over 30 artworks and 50,000+ attendees, which was pretty awesome.

I wasn’t able to attend at the time, but as I mentioned previously, a number of my friends in the arts admin scene were talking about it like crazy. So I decided to check it out this year, and report back with my own findings later.

This year, Nuit Blanche Edmonton will be putting on Petite Nuit, a smaller scale version of contemporary art and urban spaces. Featuring 5 artworks and taking place on both Friday night (September 23) and Saturday night (September 24) between 7pm and midnight. You will need to go to Beaver Hills House Park (10440 Jasper Ave NW
Edmonton, AB) in order to see the exhibits, but you can easily get there via LRT, bus, bicycle or car.

I hope you’ll be there, because it’s near Enterprise Square, and you wouldn’t want to get caught being one. But that’s just a theory. I hope you creative cuties have an excellent weekend, and I’ll see you on Sunday with the new episode of Cross Talk.

Tim!