In just four short years Light Night has established itself as one of the major highlights of the cultural calendar in Leeds.

Beginning with plenty of fanfare but perhaps little substance in 2005, Light Night has gone on to become a popular event that boasts plenty of reasons for people to flood into the city.

This year 50 venues will open their doors late into the night while 70 different artists or organisations will be involved in turning the city into a cultural haven.

The idea began as part of the regional Illuminate festival. The concept for Light Night is based on the model of events such as Nuit Blanche in Paris and Toronto and Notte Bianca in Como, Italy.

For one night each year, city centre venues that are normally closed at night open up late to host a range of cultural events, displays, shows, exhibitions, tours and provide bizarre, unusual and out-of-context entertainments, designed
to celebrate the wealth of creative and cultural activity in the city.

In 2006, visitor numbers to Light Night events stood at 6,000, but last year that figure jumped to 21,000.

The growing popularity of the event has come about through a commitment to the project from both audiences and artists.

Black Dogs is an artist collective which has been involved in Light Night since it began.

This year the collective has decided to bring summer to Leeds.

Yvonne Carmichael, one of the collective, says there is a feeling of excitement among the artists taking part in this year's event.

"We were talking about what we could do and we thought with the awful summer we've had, it would be a fun idea to bring a bit of summer to the city," she says.

So the Black Dogs will erect a tent on Briggate outside Debenhams where people will be able to go and sit in deckchairs under heat lamps, listen to a Cliff Richard impersonator, have their faces painted and do
all the things that the miserable summer hasn't allowed them to do.

The eclectic range of events will see free performances by companies including Opera North performing scenes from The Barber of Seville in the Central Library and Northern Ballet Theatre and Phoenix Dance providing free ballet lessons in City Square.

Students from Leeds University will stage a series of sound, light and performance installations at Queen Square, opposite the Merrion Centre. The 30 performers involved have created City Dell, a light installation in which people can visit a recreation of the waterways of Little Venice and a city of light in miniature.

Video artist Andy Wood will see two of his dance films projected on to the tower of the iconic Leeds University Parkinson building. The first is Gaze, a dance film shot at three local sites – Ilkley Moor, Yorkshire Sculpture Park and Runswick Bay – in which a lone tango dancer negotiates a range of outdoor terrain and destroys her treasured shoes on the way. Wood has been trying to get his work projected on to the Parkinson building for some time and was delighted when the opportunity came through the city council organised Light Night.

"This is the first year I've been involved, but I have been to Light Night type events all over Europe – in fact I've just come back from one in Italy where the town turns out all the lights and the only illumination is from candles which is really beautiful," says Wood.

"Light Night in Leeds seems to have grown exponentially this year. As an artist working in the city it seems that this sort of thing has a tipping point where it really grows and this year seems to be it for Leeds's Light Night.

"I've actually just been looking at the map and the timetable of events trying to work out what I can get to see, there's so much that trying to fit everything in is quite complicated – it's a bit like going through the programme for the Edinburgh Festival this year."

Events take place across the city, from Hyde Park Picture House on the west of the city, through the civic and retail quarters, through to the canalside and Brewery Wharf, where a series of installations called Klanging Banging may be found by following the balloons.

Most events will start at around 5.30pm and run late into the evening. Some venues will remain open until the early hours of Saturday morning, with the final one closing its doors at 6am.

For a full list of events and venues, log on to www.light
nightleeds.co.uk or visit the information point in The Light today for a copy of a brochure with a full itinerary and map.