Academics from across the University represented the institution at Kirkby Lonsdale’s flagship “Illuminate Festival”, bringing talks and child-friendly activities to village locals and visitors across the two-week festival period.

The town’s Illuminate Festival – which ran for the first time last year – featured over 50 events, including live performances, public lectures, film screenings, workshops, and children’s activities across multiple town-centre venues over nearly two weeks of February, with a range of free and paid activities for all to enjoy. The purpose of the festival is to celebrate art, culture, ideas, and community, and aims to bring together both locals and visitors together again to celebrate the vibrancy of a town that was devastated by a fire in December of 2024, and is organised by Diane Nowell, resident of Kirkby Lonsdale and events lead at St Mary’s church, alongside Jayne Davies, fellow resident of Kirkby Lonsdale.

Many of the University’s activities contributed to the free element of the festival, and included a fantastic talk on AI Deepfakes delivered by Dr Sophie Nightingale from the Psychology Department, a VR aurora experience (presented by the ISS Innovation Hub), a self-guided, scale-model solar system walk designed by undergraduate Physics students, micro:bit workshops delivered by members of the Micro:bit Innovation and Research Lab Dr Lorraine Underwood and Professor Joe Finney, and talks on “The Science of Romance”, delivered by Dr Jaime Benjamin of Lancaster’s Psychology Department and Professor Richard Rushton, Professor of Film Studies from Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts.

The festival once again proved to be a resounding success, welcoming some nearly 1700 visitors across the duration of the event.

"It was great to support the Illuminate festival in Kirkby Lonsdale.” said Dr Lorraine Underwood, lecturer in Lancaster’s School of Computing and Communications. “Our micro:bit explorers workshops went down well with local children ages 6 to 11. They coded name badges, a step counter, shiny lights and a couple of micro:bit monster trucks!"

Dr Jaime Benjamin added, commenting on her evening presenting at St Mary’s Church: “It was an amazing experience to get to present at the church. The team was so accommodating and friendly, and the crowd was so engaging to present to! Diane and her team were such fantastic hosts, and I look forward to collaborating with them in the future.”

Organiser Diane Nowell said of Lancaster’s involvement: ‘We had an amazing response to Illuminate 2026. We attracted record numbers of attendees – comprising locals and visitors from as far afield as Surrey! We’re incredibly grateful to LU for providing speakers and for helping us to deliver some fun science-based activities during half-term week, including an imaginative ‘walk the solar system’ trail across town. We’re looking forward to collaborating again next year!’