How did Late Night Art come about?
We have been working with other organisations, BOOM Studios and Seacourt Print Workshop in particular; they are involved in the bid, but we got together, just conversations over coffee, and just organised to launch Late Night Art.
BOOM Studios had taken over an old office block and turned that into artists’ studios, Seacourt took over an old bank and moved their operations in there, and we took over The Court House. That was three kind of central organisations in the art world in Bangor and we felt we could make something happen. We did that in January (2025) and we opened up at 6pm, there was already a queue and by 6.30pm we were full.
There was 10 spaces and the response was phenomenal. We have an additional 5 spaces for February and a few local businesses are going to stay open to support the event. We are just doing this ourselves. There is no official remit.
And what if people want to get involved?
Obviously we would like more dedicated spaces for visual art. But if people have a space and they are prepared to use it to host some kind of arts activity like an exhibition or a demonstration; that would be great.
We have all been at this long enough to know that we had nothing to lose. Late Night Art is helping to strengthen links between us and other arts organisations, local businesses, artists and audiences.
