Messages to the Night

Messages to the Night opens at St Columba's Church on 12 November and runs through to 20 December. It's an interactive light installation built around a digital writing station where you leave your own personal messages — hopes, dedications, memories, whatever you feel like putting down. Each one is projected in glowing amber light, blooming as if with fire before settling into a warm glow.

The whole thing takes its cue from the act of lighting a prayer candle in a church in memory of loved ones. There's something about that specific gesture — a small light left to burn for someone else — that carries through into how the installation works. Instead of wax and a wick, it's your words that hold the light. And because it's a digital station, you're not just watching it; you're adding to it.

There's a second idea at work here, too: the medieval palimpsest. In those old manuscripts, new text was written over the top of older, scraped-away writing, so the ghosts of the previous pages still peek through. That's exactly what happens here. New messages layer over the fading ones, and the installation becomes a communal, ever-changing monument that keeps shifting as more people stop by. You'll see your own words join a collective glow, and you'll see the faint traces of what came before.

It runs daily from 12 November to 20 December, with sessions of 900 minutes — fifteen hours a day — starting from 8:00 AM. That gives you plenty of room to drop in whenever suits, whether it's a quick stop on your way into town or a slower visit later in the day. It's at St Columba's Church in Scarborough, open every day throughout that run.