Polar Night Light Festival lights up Ruka and Kuusamo with vivid colors
Ruka ski resort in Lapland gets a makeover from the world’s northernmost light festival. Polar Night Light Festival can be experienced on and off skis until the 4th of February 2018. Watch the event video and see how the usual lighting is shut down and the festival lights turned on.
Polar Night Light Festival offers a new way to experience the wintery fell sceneries of northern Finland. The festival is organized for the second time, and this year even the advertising lights and billboards in Ruka Village are shut down during the event, offering a blank canvas for the festival lights and creating a unique atmosphere to the heart of Ruka.
”Never before has Ruka been lit up like this”, says Matti Jykylä, festival’s artistic director.
The usual illumination on Ruka’s ski slopes has been shut down and replaced with purple, red, blue and green lights. The massive area lighting installation covers several ski slopes making the scenery look like a winter wonderland from another world.
”Polar Night Ride on Friday evenings from 7 pm to 11 pm offers a great way for skiers and snowboarders to become a part of the light art. We encourage our guests to put on light sources such as headlamps or reflectors when heading up to the slopes, so they can bring their own lively shine to the light installations”, says Reino Tikkanen, the marketing director of Ruka Ski Resort.
The festival lighting is focused on the front slopes, so slopes in the east side of Ruka Ski Resort are lighted up as usual.
In addition to Ruka Ski Resort and Ruka Village, Polar Night Light Festival can be experienced in Kuusamo city. The water tower of Kuusamo shines in colours, and there is a light art exhibition indoors on the top of the tower with great views to the surrounding city. The exhibition consists of nine contemporary light art pieces. Lantern Park on the bottom of the tower is also well worth seeing when the day turns to night and multiple lanterns light up their snowy surroundings. The creative and playful Lantern Park is known from LUX Helsinki, but in Kuusamo it has a local twist: some of the lanterns are made by students of the local Nilo’s school. On the opening weekend, more than 700 people visited Polar Night Light Festival exhibition in the water tower.
Tickets & special offers for Polar Night Light Festival:
Polar Night Light Festival has no admission fees apart from the live gigs. Ruka’s restaurants have several 10 € meal deals.
Polar Night Light Festival is produced in collaboration with Sun Effects, Ruka Ski Resort, City of Kuusamo and Ruka-Kuusamo Tourist Association.
See video of Polar Night Light Festival’s opening weekend: https://vimeo.com/252323105
Upload the video: https://drive.google.com/file/d/17ihimYAsy8rzUr6aYMGwrhyN9vMFfd-Q/view
Polar Night Light Festival 2018 photos: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1i6OCJZeiX463ABlyjppfuiSUr9pZxKAK
More information:
Ruka Ski Resort
Reino Tikkanen, Director, Marketing and Digital Business Development,
tel. +358 50 573 0707 or reino.tikkanen@ruka.fi
lightfestival.fi
www.facebook.com/polarnightlightfestival
#polarnightlightfestival
