ArtYard’s Aqualumina Festival is a riverside lantern festival involving music, performance, and inspiring lighting at the river’s edge.
Aqualumina returns May 9, 2026. At the heart of the Festival is a luminous procession, where choral music and illuminated sea creatures drift together in a glowing spectacle.
You are invited to construct jellyfish parasols, river suits, rain cloud lantern hats, illuminated iceberg fascinators, and fish lanterns. These creations will come alive during the Festival’s parade and riverfront celebration, joined by acclaimed artists and performers, to create an unforgettable evening at the river’s edge.
“The Aqualumina Festival was designed to bring the community together around the dreamy charms of a riverbank at dark,” said Jill Kearney, ArtYard founder and executive director.
Learn more and register for this year’s festival here
ArtYard’s second biennial Aqualumina Festival was held on May 18, 2024 as a celebration of water itself — as a vulnerable resource, necessity, bellwether, and mirror of the sky.
In the lead-up to the event, more than 150 community members created aquatic costumes in ArtYard’s Aqualumina Workshop and others created their own costumes at home or in workshops with partner organizations, like Studio Route 29, Frenchtown Elementary School, Secret Garden Montessori School, and coLAB Arts in New Brunswick.
The evening of the Festival, more than 500 community members donning illuminated jellyfish parasols, crocheted coral reef hats, cardboard boats, fish tank skirts, and other unique creations joined an illuminated procession along the rail trail with stops on ArtYard’s campus to experience dance and choral performances.
The festival featured a site-specific dance performance by Brian Sanders’ JUNK, musical performances by PhilHarmonia and Sister Cities Voices.
ArtYard launched Aqualumin in 2021 with a performance of Brian Sanders’ JUNK in Ancestral Lights, a site-specific outdoor dance performance illuminating refugee narratives and kindling light in a time of darkness and displacement. Ancestral Lights grew from JUNK’s residency and hugely popular open rehearsal at ArtYard in June and employs community-constructed lanterns made in the ArtYard workshop by members of our community. The music was a three-way collaboration between Brian Sandrer’s JUNK, Oran Etkin, and Mad Beatz Philly during a residency at ArtYard.
You can view more pictures of the inaugural event on this Flickr album
Photos by Laura Billingham
