Celebration on the sands

Join in with a free weekend of fun where the sun rises first

Aftera triumphant weekend of events in 2022, First Light Festival returns to Lowestoft’s glorious South Beach on June 17-18 this year.

A free-to-attend summer solstice celebration, the festival is inspired by the cycles of the sun and runs from 12noon to sundown on the Saturday and from 10am-4pm on the Sunday. A highlight of the festival, dawn on the Sunday is a reflective experience where participants gather by the water’s edge as the first sunlight peeps over the horizon to enjoy a programme of newly commissioned performance, music and feasting that marks the shifting seasons.

New for 2023 is Sundown Events – a series of ticketed experiences from dusk on the Saturday that invite audiences to explore new festival venues off the beach and across the town; they include comedy, clubbing and a silent disco, plus an intimate contemporary jazz performance at the Royal Norfolk & Suffolk Yacht Club. There are also add-ons, such the chance to pitch a tent under the stars and set up camp among the sandy dunes a stone’s-throw from the festival site – a pop-up campsite will be open for two nights, with prices from £40 per pitch per night for a fourperson tent and parking an additional £5.

Despite extreme bad weather curtailing some performances, last year’s First Light Festival attracted a record-breaking crowd of more than 35,000 people, an increase of 20% on the inaugural event in 2019.

Genevieve Christie, CEO of First Light Festival CIC, says: “We’re delighted that First Light Festival is returning to the glorious golden sands of Lowestoft’s South Beach for a celebration of creativity, culture and the midsummer solstice this June. Since we began in 2019 our unique, free festival has really captured the imagination of audiences from across the country, with First Light becoming a highpoint of the East of England’s cultural calendar. With an incredibly diverse line-up that features international musicians, world-renown thinkers, wild beach camping, more zones than ever before and an abundance of hands-on experiences, we’re inviting visitors from the UK and beyond to join us on the beach for what will be a truly special midsummer weekend by the sea.”

•www.firstlightlowestoft.com