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There isn’t a ticket in town that can match it.

A weekend pass for the Alumni Weekend (8 to 10 February next year) will open a world within a campus and start Centenary Celebrations with a bang … no, more than a single bang: an enormous delightful enchanting exciting brilliant explosion of arts, science, entertainment, friendship, history and fun.

From a cricket match to a sumptuous tea party; from one of the country’s most outstanding gathering of authors to breath-taking images projected onto Winthrop Hall: the Alumni Weekend will be one of the richest experiences you can imagine.

And UWA staff are invited – urged – to come along and be part of it. Hundreds of alumni from across Australia and around the world are coming together – many of them staying in the University’s residential colleges. And while volunteer staff are needed to help out over the weekend, you are all invited to simply enjoy the best our campus and our community has to offer.

The centrepiece of the weekend is LUMINOUSnight, a free program of continuous and moving performance and visual art that will fill much of the space between the Reid Library and Stirling Highway, including the Sunken Garden and the Somerville Auditorium.

And the star of LUMINOUSnight is the stunning projection of images onto Winthrop Hall. The pictures will tell the story of UWA in 20 minutes, and be repeated throughout the night, showcasing the brilliance of projection artist Cindi Drennan and her team from Illuminart, and made possible by generous sponsorship from TDC, the company which is supplying the 10 high-performance projectors which will create the light of 200 million candles.

Music performances around the campus will include ‘SWAT’ teams of musicians from the School of Music; the two bands of Clint Bracknell , the multi-talented musician and academic from the School of Indigenous Studies ; the award-winning local band Split Seconds (whose lead singer’s father, Jeff Pollard, is a staff member at UWA); Fred Smith, alumnus, song-writer and folk singer extraordinaire; and the gipsy quartet Saggezza with Cathie Travers and Ashley Arbuckle.

Giant 3D projections of faces will loom out from the trees around campus; Peacocks, Crows, Lorikeets, a 20-minute dance to celebrate the birds on campus, has been created for the night by local choreographer Chrissie Parrot (this is not a joke); a century-old version of the film Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, will screen at the Somerville to a live score performed by the Nova Ensemble; and GRADS and the Undergraduate Dramatic Society will present plays and shorts scenes in the New Fortune Theatre.

Rene Van Meeuwen , from Architecture, Landscape and Visual Art, has developed an app for smart phones that creates an ‘augmented reality’. By looking through your phone at specific points around the campus, you will see amazing scenes unfold before your eyes.

At 10pm, everybody will come together on James Oval for the Fire Finale, a ground-level theatrical fireworks show featuring giant puppets.

Then the party begins again with music in the University Club’s amphitheatre until late into the night.

LUMINOUSnight was born of an original idea from Ted Snell , Director of UWA’s Cultural Precinct, and has been brought to fruition by Ian Lilburne, arts administrator and UWA staff member. As well as the University’s centenary fund, the event has been generously supported by Lotterywest and the State Government.

A ticket for the Alumni Weekend, which includes all activities, tours, lectures, performances, the cocktail party on the Friday evening and morning and afternoon teas during the weekend, costs $75.

The LUMINOUSnight celebrations are free for the general public. Bookings, including reserving a place at specific events, can be made through Centenary .

Published in UWA News , 26 November 2012