There is a five-storey building beside a lake in Finchley that the public has never been inside. For two days in November it opens, free, as the centre of a borough-wide arts festival, and then it closes again.
Light + Flight runs across two weekends, 14 and 15 November at Finchley Lakeside and 21 and 22 November at the RAF Museum and artsdepot. Everything is free. It is funded by a Cultural Impact Award under the Mayor’s London Borough of Culture programme, with Heritage Fund and Arts Council money behind it, and curated with HemingwayDesign.
The building, and what goes in it
Finchley Lakeside is a five-storey complex overlooking a pine-flanked lake, and for that first weekend it becomes a temporary cultural hub: large-scale installations, a temporary cinema, live music, workshops, a gift shop of Barnet makers and a food programme.
The centrepiece is Ascendance, by Matthew Rosier with UP Projects, made with more than a hundred Barnet residents. Video portraits of local young people, appearing to float, fill the building’s five-storey atrium, set against audio of elders describing their migrations to the borough, recordings of local birdsong and an original score. It is unveiled as the sun goes down at 4.30pm on 14 November and then stays up until the 22nd.
George Michael, arranged by a Bond composer
Barnet-born George Michael gets an unexpected tribute. Young musicians from the Barnet Education Arts Trust, the SACRE Multifaith Choir and the London Youth Concert Band perform a new arrangement of Praying for Time by David Arnold, who scored five James Bond films and has worked with Björk, Paul McCartney and Ed Sheeran. From 4pm on both days.
Also Barnet-born and turning up: Keith Brymer Jones, the ceramicist who cries on The Great Pottery Throw Down, for a participatory event still to be announced.
The second weekend
On 21 November the festival moves to the RAF Museum for From Barnet with Love, built around Britain’s first official airmail flight, which left Hendon Aerodrome in 1911. Artist Emma Tominey has been collecting postcards from residents all year, and there is Morse code, semaphore, stamp collecting and a family trail. 10am to 3.30pm.
That evening and the next, artsdepot hosts Lighthouse, a live piece by the learning disabled artist and composer Jez Colborne with Mind the Gap, about a lighthouse keeper facing automation. 7.30pm on the 21st, 6pm on the 22nd, as part of artsdepot’s LIT/UP weekend.
The London x London Take: Go on the Saturday, go late, and be there for 4.30pm when Ascendance is unveiled, because a five-storey atrium full of floating teenagers is not a thing you will get another chance at and the building shuts again afterwards. The rest of that day is properly programmed rather than padded: a sound system built by hand, a communal stew, a temporary cinema run by the Phoenix. If you have never had a reason to go to Finchley, this is a better one than most of what central London is putting on that weekend, and it costs nothing.
Need to know
- What: Light + Flight, a free borough-wide arts festival presented by Art in Barnet
- First weekend: Finchley Lakeside, 14 November 12pm to 9pm and 15 November 11am to 7pm
- Second weekend: RAF Museum London, 21 November 10am to 3.30pm. Lighthouse at artsdepot, 21 November 7.30pm and 22 November 6pm
- Ascendance: Unveiled 4.30pm on 14 November, on show until 22 November
- Price: Free throughout
- Booking: Eventbrite for the first weekend, and lightandflight.co.uk for the rest
More out this way in our guide to things to do in north London, and the rest of the month in our pick of this weekend’s events.
