Every Moonraking Festival has a theme, this helps inspire the lantern making, costumes for the Moonrakers and other festival programming during the week and at the finale.
In 1998 for example we chose the theme Out of the Woods and this inspired us to create Gnome costumes for the Moon carriers. These were so loved that we kept the Moon carriers as Gnomes ever since….adapting them to the themes where we could…Gastro-Gnomes, Astro-Gnomes, you get the picture. Part of the joy of being a Gnome was that you had a beard as a disguise, so you became part of a secret club and it allowed upstanding members of the community to ‘play their mas’ as they say in Trinidad and be a dancing prancing Gnome for the night!
Past themes
The Space theme cropped up when we did Lunar Landings in 2009 (see Huddersfield Examiner coverage here and their gallery of pictures here) and there was also a good showing of space related lanterns when we did ‘Up in the Air’ as a theme in 1996.
The Circus theme in 1992 generated some superb lanterns and was the year that the Ellis family climbed on board the Lantern-making ship, with Karima steering our lantern workshops into aspiring hubs of accessible creativity and Rachel now continues at the helm, ensuring that Moonrakers are rightly proud of their lantern creations. Our guest artists that year were SWAMP circus who ran circus skills sessions throughout the week – do you remember making a human pyramid?
Fruity Veg in 2001 was the only Festival that Satellite Arts were not involved in and was memorable for some brilliant Aubergine costumes, and the nose on the Moon! And for the Polar themed Festival in 1994 Karima made a giant Polar Bear that went on to illuminate the Christmas Ice Skating Rink in the Piazza later in the year.
To jog your memory, here are some other festival themes:
1990 – Mythical Beasts; 1991 – Music; 1997- Eastern Lights;
1997 – Island Worlds; 2000- Our Place (celebrating the Colne Valley);
2003 – Animal Magic; 2004 – Pantomime;
2006 – Maritime; 2013 – Time; 2015 – Landmarks; 2017 – Moonmentum Machines