First Light Festival 2023 kicked off with a huge parade celebrating Lowestoft and the animals and people that call this place home. The culmination of months of community workshops and school engagement sessions, the parade was delivered by First Light Festival as part of the nationwide Hi!Street Fest project with Historic England/Arts Council England and Emergency Exit Arts and with support from East Suffolk Council.

Telling the story of Farrah, a 5-metre high fox, and Sol, Lowestoft's spirit of the sea puppet, the parade saw community groups, musicians, performers and audiences process from the Marina Theatre in the north of the town to our main Sunlight Stage at the First Light Festival site.

The project saw the creation of a new street samba band with Marina Theatre, a series of sustainable creative workshops with Re-Utilise, educational school sessions delivered by Suffolk Wildlife Trust, the commissioning of new artworks by local groups such as Suffolk Artlink’s Brave Artists, hundreds of metres of knitted bunting made by local crafters, business owners across the high street dressing their shopfronts, and the creation of Sol, our Lowestoft puppet, co-created by the community who will live on at events in the town for years to come.

Over 5 months, the project:

• Worked with 14 schools and 16 community groups,

• Ran 6 in-school sessions with 1,500+ school children and 140+ school staff

• Programmed 2 CPD sessions with 18 teachers for recycled mask-making skills

• Engaged with 400+ families across 7 free creative workshops

• With our partners at Emergency Exit Arts worked with 3 community producers during an 11 week training period

• Welcomed audiences of 4,000+ for the parade