Gift of Light was a project conceived and led by Fiona Brehony, commissioned by Manchester School of Art and extended as an open invitation across Manchester Metropolitan University and the Royal Northern College of Music. Bringing together participants from across disciplines – fine art, geography, nutrition, music, writing – the project used light as its central inquiry, exploring how we perceive, inhabit, and are shaped by the light in our immediate environments.

Drawing on Peter Mettler’s 1994 documentary Picture of Light – a meditative film about the pursuit of the Northern Lights – the project approached light not simply as subject matter but as a kind of political and poetic condition: who has access to light, how light moves through the spaces we inhabit, and what it means to seek it. Participants worked both individually and collaboratively, producing responses across moving image, writing, sound, and visual art.

The resulting works were gathered into a collective online exhibition space – one that remained open and generative, inviting continued response and contribution beyond the workshops themselves. Gift of Light marked an early articulation of ideas that continue to run through Brehony’s practice: the relationship between environment and experience, the poetic possibilities of attentive observation, and the quiet politics of everyday light. Designed as an open invitation to participants regardless of artistic background, the project held space for curiosity, play, and the possibility of finding new cracks of light in the most immediate of spaces.