THE WELLY JELLY ON WATERFRONT
Hundreds of giant lanterns – from a swarm of jellyfish to a five-storey giant squid to a family of penguins – will light up the Wellington waterfront this weekend.
The Lumino City festival will feature 350 lanterns from Whairepo Lagoon to Waitangi Park over tonight and tomorrow night. This year’s festival also includes 60 inflatable light-up costumes that models will be moving around in over the two nights.
The event’s sponsorship and funding manager Martin Boland said 85,000 visitors were expected to descend on the waterfront to enjoy the dazzling lights, performances from local artists and the more than 50 food vendors.
‘‘We’re back, we’re bigger, we’re brighter,’’ Boland said. ‘‘I think this year is the craziest event we’ve done. People are quite literally going to be dwarfed by the creativity of these five-storey lanterns.’’
The lanterns were bought two years ago from China but have been waiting to be displayed since, with Covid-19 forcing organisers to put the festival on hold for the past two years.
While most people associated lanterns with Chinese culture, several other countries also placed significance on them, Boland said. This year 13 embassies were involved in the free festival and had their own specific lanterns created in an around the world section.