Lighting the Legend 2013

Ships, Soup and Sparklers

Lantern Parade, Street Theatre and Firework Show

Friday 6th November 2013, 6.30pm

Venue : Ordsall Community Arts, Ordsall Cafe and St Clements Church

The whole estate was heartbroken earlier in October when the famous Blue Cranes were demolished. The last symbol of the docks heritage was gone.

As with much of the Docks story, its peppered with nick-names and the cranes were no exception. Some called them the Hurdy-Gurdies, because the chairs in the cabis were really springy.

We were inspired the by the story of two crane drivers who worked together a lot, were good mates and were together a lot of the time. They got the nick name - love and marriage, and so did the cranes.

Working with local actor and artist Ross MCormack and Amber Sanchez, we devised a script to reflect the passing of the docks history into the present day, when the value of such a strong symbol of the docks was lost to the community.

Visual artists and 3d makers, Marie Cash, Nargiza Ibrahim, Lawrence Cassidy and Dave Rooney themed the hand-held and feature lanterns for the parade and street theatre show. They made two beautiful crane lanterns, which Amber and Ross animated, and they 'performed' the script. The children and parade audience carried ships through the streets. The final scene when the ships finished their parade, to cause Love to comment to Marriage "Its quiet round here now" was a moving moment for the audience.

A shard from the cranes