{"id":17531,"date":"2017-01-23T15:04:37","date_gmt":"2017-01-23T15:04:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/?p=17531"},"modified":"2017-01-24T13:07:23","modified_gmt":"2017-01-24T13:07:23","slug":"winter-lights-festival-in-canary-wharf-crowds-selfies-galore-and-disappointment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/winter-lights-festival-in-canary-wharf-crowds-selfies-galore-and-disappointment\/","title":{"rendered":"Winter Lights festival in Canary Wharf: crowds, selfies galore and disappointment"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/images\/winter-lights-london-01.jpg\" alt=\"Winter Lights festival in Canary Wharf: crowds, selfies galore and frustrations\" border=\"0\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Last week we went along to check out the Winter Lights Festival at Canary Wharf. Sadly, we made the mistake of arriving on a Saturday which seemed to coincide with Peak Tourist Selfie Action.,<\/p>\n<p>Promising &#8220;30 spectacular light installations,&#8221; the festival runs until this Friday, 27th January.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/images\/winter-lights-london-02.jpg\" alt=\"Winter Lights festival in Canary Wharf: crowds, selfies galore and frustrations\" border=\"0\" \/><\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s easy enough to get to &#8211; just hop on the tube to Canary Wharf &#8211; but you&#8217;ll probably soon get frustrated trying to find all the exhibits, with poor signage and a <a href=\"http:\/\/canarywharf.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/canary-wharf-arts-events-winter-lights-map-2017.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">hopelessly vague map<\/a> making it a frustrating experience.<\/p>\n<p>Canary Wharf is a particularly soulless place &#8211; a dystopian corporate space patrolled by pretend cops who sweep away anything that doesn&#8217;t match with the shiny brochures.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/images\/winter-lights-london-03.jpg\" alt=\"Winter Lights festival in Canary Wharf: crowds, selfies galore and frustrations\" border=\"0\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The work on offer was wildly variable with very few coming remotely close to being &#8216;spectacular.&#8217; Some were just plain dull.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/images\/winter-lights-london-04.jpg\" alt=\"Winter Lights festival in Canary Wharf: crowds, selfies galore and frustrations\" border=\"0\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Some of the work was taking place in Crossrail Place, which offers an impressive roof garden.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/images\/winter-lights-london-05.jpg\" alt=\"Winter Lights festival in Canary Wharf: crowds, selfies galore and frustrations\" border=\"0\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The biggest problem was the crowds, most of whom seemed preoccupied with capturing selfies rather than actually looking at the work.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/images\/winter-lights-london-06.jpg\" alt=\"Winter Lights festival in Canary Wharf: crowds, selfies galore and frustrations\" border=\"0\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/images\/winter-lights-london-07.jpg\" alt=\"Winter Lights festival in Canary Wharf: crowds, selfies galore and frustrations\" border=\"0\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/images\/winter-lights-london-08.jpg\" alt=\"Winter Lights festival in Canary Wharf: crowds, selfies galore and frustrations\" border=\"0\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/images\/winter-lights-london-09.jpg\" alt=\"Winter Lights festival in Canary Wharf: crowds, selfies galore and frustrations\" border=\"0\" \/><\/p>\n<p>I liked the illuminated benches, though you&#8217;d be hard pressed to describe them as &#8216;spectacular.&#8217; &#8216;Gimmicky&#8217; or &#8216;fun,&#8217; perhaps.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/images\/winter-lights-london-10.jpg\" alt=\"Winter Lights festival in Canary Wharf: crowds, selfies galore and frustrations\" border=\"0\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/images\/winter-lights-london-11.jpg\" alt=\"Winter Lights festival in Canary Wharf: crowds, selfies galore and frustrations\" border=\"0\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/images\/winter-lights-london-12.jpg\" alt=\"Winter Lights festival in Canary Wharf: crowds, selfies galore and frustrations\" border=\"0\" \/><\/p>\n<p>This innuendo-laden creation drew liquid up to the top if you rubbed it hard enough. \u00a0Oooer, Matron.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/images\/winter-lights-london-13.jpg\" alt=\"Winter Lights festival in Canary Wharf: crowds, selfies galore and frustrations\" border=\"0\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/images\/winter-lights-london-14.jpg\" alt=\"Winter Lights festival in Canary Wharf: crowds, selfies galore and frustrations\" border=\"0\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The lighting in the mist was, frankly, a bit underwhelming.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/images\/winter-lights-london-15.jpg\" alt=\"Winter Lights festival in Canary Wharf: crowds, selfies galore and frustrations\" border=\"0\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Although there&#8217;s plenty of interesting architecture that makes up Crossrail Place, it&#8217;s a shame seeing it dominated by bright branding for the &#8216;Big Easy Bar-B-Q and Crabshack.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/images\/winter-lights-london-16.jpg\" alt=\"Winter Lights festival in Canary Wharf: crowds, selfies galore and frustrations\" border=\"0\" \/><\/p>\n<p>These lights looked more like something off a fairground ride.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/images\/winter-lights-london-17.jpg\" alt=\"Winter Lights festival in Canary Wharf: crowds, selfies galore and frustrations\" border=\"0\" \/><\/p>\n<p>I quite liked these blue glowing sticks.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/images\/winter-lights-london-18.jpg\" alt=\"Winter Lights festival in Canary Wharf: crowds, selfies galore and frustrations\" border=\"0\" \/><\/p>\n<p>It wasn&#8217;t easy to find (the signage was dreadful) but the bulk of the exhibits were to be found at lurking in the -3 level of Crossrail Place.<\/p>\n<p>Only problem was that it was absolutely packed by selfie-snapping visitors and &#8216;serious&#8217; photographers who insisted on setting up their tripod trip hazards everywhere.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/images\/winter-lights-london-19.jpg\" alt=\"Winter Lights festival in Canary Wharf: crowds, selfies galore and frustrations\" border=\"0\" \/><\/p>\n<p>If you managed to squeeze past the crowds into the exhibits, there wasn&#8217;t much space\u00a0or time to take in the work.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/images\/winter-lights-london-20.jpg\" alt=\"Winter Lights festival in Canary Wharf: crowds, selfies galore and frustrations\" border=\"0\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/images\/winter-lights-london-21.jpg\" alt=\"Winter Lights festival in Canary Wharf: crowds, selfies galore and frustrations\" border=\"0\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/images\/winter-lights-london-22.jpg\" alt=\"Winter Lights festival in Canary Wharf: crowds, selfies galore and frustrations\" border=\"0\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/images\/winter-lights-london-23.jpg\" alt=\"Winter Lights festival in Canary Wharf: crowds, selfies galore and frustrations\" border=\"0\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s why it was often hard to get a look at anything &#8211; people would just stand in front of the work taking pictures with their phones or posing for selfies.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/images\/winter-lights-london-24.jpg\" alt=\"Winter Lights festival in Canary Wharf: crowds, selfies galore and frustrations\" border=\"0\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s another <em>nice-but-definitely-less-than-spectacular<\/em> exhibit.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/images\/winter-lights-london-25.jpg\" alt=\"Winter Lights festival in Canary Wharf: crowds, selfies galore and frustrations\" border=\"0\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/images\/winter-lights-london-26.jpg\" alt=\"Winter Lights festival in Canary Wharf: crowds, selfies galore and frustrations\" border=\"0\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The best bit of the day was seeing Canary Wharf station again &#8211; it really is a cracking example of modern transport design.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/images\/winter-lights-london-27.jpg\" alt=\"Winter Lights festival in Canary Wharf: crowds, selfies galore and frustrations\" border=\"0\" \/><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/canarywharf.com\/arts-events\/events\/winter-lights-2017\/?instance_id=\" target=\"_blank\">Official Winter Lights festival<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last week we went along to check out the Winter Lights Festival at Canary Wharf. Sadly, we made the mistake of arriving on a Saturday which seemed to coincide with &hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17532,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[54,194,17],"tags":[34,133,1422,325,1559,1558],"class_list":["post-17531","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-festivals","category-london-features","category-photos","tag-art","tag-canary-wharf","tag-exhibition","tag-festival","tag-winter-lights","tag-winter-lights-festival"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/winter-lights-london-01.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pQI7P-4yL","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17531","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17531"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17531\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17535,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17531\/revisions\/17535"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}