Last week we went to see 'Luxmuralis: In the beginning' at Bristol Cathedral, which was really, really captivating, really immersive and a really lovely night out. It's now finished, unfortunately, for this year but do keep an eye on it appearing again for booking for next year, as I believe this was the third year that it had run. They're currenty at Liverpool Cathedral, followed by Sheffield and then St Augustine’s Abbey for Canterbury Festival. They'll be at Wells Cathedral in January.
It's basically a big light show inside the cathedral. Patterns and pictures are projected onto the walls of the cathedral in time to really beautiful music.
There were 3 sections which were just like nice patterns, with different colors and shapes, which joined up two main sections which I felt were more themed or told a story. The first of these main sections was candy canes and Father Christmas, baubles and the more kind of modern commercial side of Christmas, but really beautifully done. And then you walked down a corridor (one of the 3 "joining" sections) which was still worth stopping to look at that was basically like you were walking down a giant kaleidoscope. When you get to the second of the "main sections" I'd say you were in the main event, which was telling the Christmas story. The event this year was called "in the beginning" which feels like the most obvious thing for a cathedral to tell in lights at Christmas. So you could see projections of, we assume it was Mary, it was very clearly the wise men, there were stars, and there were angels. And whereas the slightly more modern Christmas show had been accompanied with songs like jingle bells (I can't actually remember what they were - it was really lovely, but I still can't quite remember what they were) this one was more like carols, really, really beautiful carols. I think orchestral rather than vocals.
It starts late afternoon, maybe like four o'clock, and goes on into the night. You book an arrival slot and you've got 15 minutes to arrive for your chosen time slot. Before six o'clock they say it's quite quiet, and then after six o'clock it gets louder. Someone in my party had thought that they'd heard it was deafening after that point, so we took ear protectors for our three year old, but we didn't use them. It was definitely louder after six but it was just all the better for being a bit louder. And certainly, for me, I didn't think it was too loud in that final room. We were stood quite central to the projections and the music got loud and I looked at my watch and saw it was the literally striking six and it just felt so immersive and so amazing and so all consuming, these lights and the music getting louder. And I, I'm quite a sucker for loud music - not that I play music loud a lot, but I mean, I can get quite absorbed in music and I just found it really, really a lovely experience.
All of the different rooms are on a loop; they have their lights and their patterns and they tell their little story and then it stops and it loops again. So when that final room started to loop again, we went and sat down in some chairs that were laid out in rows to the side so as to watch it again and it wasn't so good when you were sat down, it was more just like watching a film in a cinema. The lights were still good, the view was still good, but it's just personally, I didn't find it as immersive as when I was on my feet. There's something more all encompassing about being stood surrounded by light and music rather than sitting on a chair with a toddler on your lap and your seven year old next to you kicking your chair. It was more of a magical experience being stood central and unencumbered, I suppose.
When we first got there, we didn't really know what the score was, so we just kind of walked around it a bit quickly. Therefore we decided to try and go back and do the first section again. It was just patterns, but we still hadn't really taken it in. So we tried to double back and we were told it was one way system, but that we could go through a red barrier back the way we'd come. We got to the red barrier and a lady unhooked it and opened up the barrier for us. We were a little confused as to why there was even a barrier there in the first place if that was the way to go back around it again - we think maybe they want to try and funnel people the right way and they're maybe not completely highlighting the fact that you can just go back around it again. But there's also no hesitation if you do want to go back around it again. And I was pretty sure that's what I had read - that whilst you had your 15 minute arrival slot, you could then spend as long as you wanted in there. I had also read it takes about 40 minutes and that was pretty bang on accurate for how long we were in there. Maybe we might have gone to an hour actually because we watched some of it more. But you could totally have done it in a lot less if you didn't make sure that everything had fully repeated and looped. You could maybe do it in half an hour (you could walk around the Cathedral in 10 minutes), which if you're parking at Millennium Square would mean you would be within the hour of parking and then it would only cost you £3.50. As it was we went over an hour, so then we took a walk back along the waterfront past Watershed and back across Millennium Square and paid £7 for parking.
We paid £11.99 per adult and £7.99 per child, except for our three year old who was free because 0 - 3s are free. And it was made very clear that inclusive of three year olds were free (charges kicked in at 4) and that was really good because whilst it was really lovely, it was an evening thing, and the littler kids were tired, so it perhaps didn't hold their attention all that much. It actually made my seven year old want to fall asleep, as it was so "relaxing". So whilst we all went and enjoyed it, I felt like it was good that the three year old was free. My 10 year old has since said that he enjoyed it, but that it wasn't "really his thing".
I remember thinking that I preferred being there so much more to watching a fireworks display or even a drone show (I haven't really seen a proper drone show before, only on TV, so maybe I'd be bowled over in real life); it was just so atmospheric being in a cathedral and the music was so clear that you could really hear everything well and it was not raining or cold. We hadn't had to worry about what the weather would be like in the night because it was all inside. And so yes, whilst it's an experience that you can do in less than an hour and it cost us £40, it still felt like, well, at least that's only (!) £40 as opposed to the £70 it was going to cost us to go to some other historic house that has some pretty outdoor light show that we were going to go and see. And we stayed warm and dry.
We've also, in previous years, done the Longleaf Festival of Life and that is very nice, but there's lots to just walk around and look at this was just more magical in an immersive way. And so for £40, and you did it on a weekday evening, it just felt like a really lovely Christmas night out. It feels like we ticked the big, "let's do something Christmassy" box for £40 on a weeknight, so it didn't eat into an already busy other weekend in December. I will definitely be looking out for tickets to see if they do it again next year, as I know my mother-in-law would love it and she couldn't join us this time. As you can probably guess, I would highly recommend it!
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