Annwn.Cymru
“Annwn, or “Otherworld” in Welsh folklore, is a multiple partner collaboration which has bought together the renowned light artist Chris Levine, acclaimed musician and composer Gruff Rhys, the Welsh Government, CADW - the official custodian body for Welsh heritage sites, and the people of Gwynedd and North Wales.
In November 2023 Caernarfon Castle became the setting for an otherworldly multi-sensory experience, which deployed lasers and spatial sound to take audiences on a transformational journey.
The approach taken at Caernarfon was to root Annwn firmly as a community project by working in collaboration with local artists and creative, technical, production and promotional specialists to deliver a genuinely community-owned major event production.
Annwn is the latest evolution of the iy_project; an ongoing sequence of community focused installations seeking to transform its audiences’ experience of place, using local cultural narratives and landscapes to connect people to each other and to the natural and built environment.
The artistic lineage of the iy_project includes the Dark MOFO Festival in Tasmania where it headlined to an audience of 300,000, and two record-breaking winter seasons at Eden Project - achieving a 65% increase in visitor numbers year on year with over 120,000 visitors.
Annwn was also commissioned to be the centrepiece of Glastonbury's 50th anniversary celebrations in 2020.