About the Lantern Festival

Public Project – Public Art

The Lantern Festival is a public project. Victoria Park is the canvas for the festival, and the festival highlights the historical and natural features of the park, including the annual daylighting of buried Bennett’s Brook with a river of glass jar lanterns. The sheer number of people who attend the festival and enjoy this vital urban space after dusk is astounding.

St. John’s best kept festival secret

Now considered one of the most colourful and multicultural gatherings in St. John’s, the Lantern Festival begins with months of grassroots planning: steering committee meetings; partner and volunteer recruitment; train the trainer sessions; fundraising; and staff hiring; not to mention the public lantern-building workshops, special events and outreach activities in the summer weeks leading up to Festival Day. Every effort has been made to keep our events accessible to everyone so admission is free or by suggested donation. We take every opportunity to reuse materials for our projects – in particular, we’ve re-purposed thousands of glass jars that are not currently collected recyclables in our community. We also seek out and try to do our part in mutually-supportive partnerships with other creative non-profit groups operating on a shoestring here.

  • The Art Part

    Our festival spills into the greater community, through public art installations, through outreach workshops and through participation in other public art projects, such as the Newfoundland and Labrador Folk Festival and the Christmastime Mummers’ Festival.
  • Community Roots

    The Lantern Festival is a project of the Friends of Victoria Park (FOVP). The Friends came together in 1998 with the goal of turning around the apparent deterioration of one of St. John’s most significant and historic public green spaces.

  • On Festival Day

    Activities in the Park kick off mid-afternoon on Festival Day with a line-up of music, dance, demonstrations, community booths, a glass jar lantern workshop and other entertainment. At dusk, the crowd swells. Following a mass lantern-lighting in the lower Park the lantern process winds it way up the hill to the installation and everyone settles down to enjoy the fire show.
  • The Lantern Installation

    The Lantern Installation is a key part of the festival’s magical appeal. The steep topography of the upper park is the perfect canvas on which to display the creative efforts of the community’s lantern building. The installation manual explains how we make the installation happen.