STUDENT artists and technologists are being given the chance to exhibit their work in Light Up Poole, the town's annual festival of digital light art.

Running from Thursday, February 20 to Saturday, February 22, a number of free and ticketed events will take place around Poole High Street, the Quay and the Old Town.

In a project entitled Experimental, students from Bournemouth University's Media Production course will take over the Dolphin Centre after dark with 15 installations scattered throughout the shopping centre. The pieces explore how technology can enhance art and make the science behind it more accessible to the audience.

Liam Birtles, a light artist and part-time lecturer at the university, said: "I'm asking students to re-imagine and re-use a commercial space in response to the festival's theme, Spectrum. The Dolphin Centre is a bright, shiny area with a surprising amount of visual clutter so the students have to deal with all of that and produce work that is not dwarfed by the space it is shown in. It’s a real challenge but Light Up Poole and the Dolphin Centre are to be applauded for being open to that challenge and for allowing this to happen."

Elsewhere, art and design students from Bournemouth and Poole College will exhibit their own interpretations of Spectrum and host light painting workshops in empty shop spaces on Kingland Crescent, while physicists and astronomers from the University of Southampton return with The Photon Shop at St James' Community Hall. After its success last year, The Photon Shop invites the public to take part in a range of activities related to photonics and dark energy.

Funded by Arts Council England and main sponsor Poole BID, with additional contributions from BCP Council and private businesses, Light Up Poole is now in its third year. In 2019, the event attracted an estimated 40,000 visitors.

Liam added: "Light Up Poole is very good at speaking to the whole community. It’s about people realising they are allowed to come out and claim the streets and be part of something collective after dark in February."

Full details of the festival can be found at www.lightuppoole.co.uk.