City of Light, City of Sanctuary is an ambitious public art project to build a floating city on Sefton Park Boating Lake involving mass creative participation. Hundreds of lantern buildings will be constructed into a glowing cityscape – from shelters, houses and blocks of flats to warehouses and iconic buildings from Liverpool and around the world. Over a thousand Liverpool residents of all ages (both newly arrived and long established) will be engaged in making the work.

Using the simplest materials – sticks, paper and stories – City of Light is a public space for reflection on local and global experiences of migration, home and belonging.

The concept was born from the increasingly urgent issues of displacement affecting many people and communities in the world today. The work asks everyone who engages with it what ‘a place to call home’ means to them, and seeks to promote dialogue and understanding between settled communities and dislocated ones.

An original soundscape will bring this imaginary metropolis to life, blending sonic ebbs and flows that mirror its inner life, with original music, personal stories and poetry.

To realise the project, the Lantern Company are working in collaboration with partner arts organisation Writing on the Wall and engaging with residents of all ages and backgrounds to share stories, write and record poetry and build lanterns. By bringing generations and communities together, the City of Light gives voice to a multitude of diverse experiences and aims to offer a vision of hope, light and solidarity.