Weather fails to darken festival of lights

The return of Spectra, Aberdeen’s festival of light, saw it welcome thousands of visitors, despite stormy weather curtailing the proceedings.

The event had been scheduled to run from Thursday to Sunday, but the organisers were forced to cancel the final night due to the atrocious weather.

However, most of the visitors were not deterred in the first three days, as large crowds turned up.

Nine new artists were featured this year on more city centre sites than ever before.

The 10m tentacles, which took over Marischal Square

“We were delighted to see thousands of visitors across all of the festival sites”

and Aberdeen Art Centre, were one of the highlights.

This year’s Spectra was inspired by the Year of Coasts and Waters and featured the likes of Yiannis Kranidiotis, whose interactive installation Plastic Sea counted how many kilogrammes of plastic can be found in our oceans per square kilometre.

Andy Brydon, director at the organisers Curated Place, said: “We are delighted with the turnout and success of this year’s Spectra.

“It was great to see how well both returning and brand-new artists and their work have been received.

“Like the rest of the UK, we faced the occasional weatherrelated challenge, but in spite of this, we were delighted to see thousands of visitors across all of the festival sites, which were more varied than ever before.

“We would like to thank those who did turn out.”