One thousand local people are to be recruited to participate in a mass gathering in Dorset on Saturday 11 June.

Green Space Dark Skies will see people come together with artists and creatives to forge powerful collective connections to the local landscape.

The artworks will be created at dusk by participants from the local area, known as Lumenators. Guided along pathways or waterways and carrying smart lights, that are sensitive to the night-time environment, the digital choreography will be captured on film and available to watch online afterwards. Each short film will incorporate the stories of the people and places featured. Lumenators will also be encouraged to share their own connections to the landscape and the local areas as part of their involvement. The artwork will imagine a new way of seeing the local landscape in Dorset and inspire people to care for the planet for future generations.

Taking place in the Dorset Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, the exact location won’t be revealed to the general public until after the event, to protect this amazing landscape.

The gathering is nationwide as 20,000 people are being recruited to create large-scale outdoor artworks in 20 of the UK’s most outstanding landscapes for Green Space Dark Skies, part of UNBOXED: Creativity in the UK, from April to September this year.

Green Space Dark Skies is inspired by the 90th anniversary of the 1932 Kinder Scout Mass Trespass, a pivotal event in the movement to secure access to the countryside for ordinary people that influenced the creation of the UK’s network of National Parks.

Green Space Dark Skies will enable people from all walks of life to forge new connections with the countryside by supporting those who experience cultural and physical barriers to experiencing our national parks and Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty to access events. The series of gatherings will celebrate the countryside and people’s right to explore it as well as encouraging our responsibility to take care of it for future generations.

Outdoor art experts Walk the Plank are the lead creative organisation in the production of Green Space Dark Skies and John Wassell, creative producer, said: “Green Space Dark Skies is about class and landscape, race and landscape, disability and landscape. We want to build more countryside stewards for the future, and to inspire more people to see the connection between their use and enjoyment of the land and our care for the planet.”

Developed by graduate engineers at Siemens specially for this project, the lighting technology uses existing wireless programmable low impact lights and incorporates something that’s never been done before: the ability for these lights to be animated through geo-positioning, where the position of each light can be known in relationship to the others. As well, there is potential for this lighting technology to be adopted for use at future major outdoor events.

The Green Space Dark Skies team is working with Dark Skies representatives in many locations to explore how the project might highlight issues around light pollution in our towns, cities and rural landscapes to support wildlife to flourish.

“The moment when darkness falls, and we switch the lights off, is going to be the most important collective act of connection between people and nature within each event,” added John Wassell.

Dorset-based Activate Performing Arts are working with the Green Space Dark Skies team as local producers.

To protect these amazing places, the exact locations will only be revealed to the people who have registered to take part. There will be no spectators, but anyone can take part for free as long as they sign up in advance and everyone can watch the films of each event online.

Events will take place across the UK from 23 April with the finale in September featuring events in all four nations of the UK:

Walk the Plank is working with each national park and Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty to create an event as part of Green Space Dark Skies. Each event will depend on the confirmation of landowner permissions, approval of event plans and local stakeholder engagement and therefore event locations and dates may be subject to change.

Become a Dorset Lumenator by registering at: https://greenspacedarkskies.uk/