19th November - 26th November 2026

Doncaster Corn Exchange

Doncaster Festival of Light is a free cultural event for the community of Doncaster. We strive to push boundaries and deliver a unique high quality event that we can all be proud of. This is about audiences connecting to joy, embracing experiences and participatory moments. Culture belongs to everyone.

THE ARTWORK

This year’s Doncaster Festival of Light features Boris Acket’s The Bird of a Thousand Voices.

The mythological bird appears in many different cultures and often symbolises resurrection and awakening.

This sculpture is inspired by Leonardo Da Vinci’s sketches of a dream machine to make human kind fly — is about the relationship between illusion and the thing you choose to believe in.

Boris Acket is a conceptual artist based in Amsterdam, working with sound, light, movement and kinetic sculpture. His research-driven practice looks at the systems that shape how we perceive the world around us, often using natural phenomena such as wind, water, gravity and light as both subject and material.

The artwork was first commission as part of a performance with music by Tigran Hamansyan, which premiered in the Holland Festival on June 8, 2024, directed by Ruben van Leer.

“In the wings, you might also see a Da Vinci machine, a mechanical structure that mimics nature and captures the human desire to fly. The same ambivalence between the natural and the artificial can be found in the music: in the pure sounds of the instruments versus the distortions of the synthesizers and the mixing consoles that Hamasyan manipulates.” — Mina Etemad

The Bird of a Thousand Voices presented at Vilnius Light Festival 2026