Does your light art festival need its own social media pages?

Promoting your festival through BID and council pages can feel like the safer option. Here’s why social media pages of its own is usually worth the effort, and what to weigh up first.

By Becca Wheble9-minute read14th October 2026

So, you put together a light art festival every year, and you’re now weighing up whether your festival needs its own social media pages.

Maybe it’s always been promoted through your Business Improvement District (BID) (opens in a new tab) social media, which already has an established, local following. Maybe you’ve relied on more traditional marketing until now, and you want to use social media to shout about your event. Or maybe you’re setting up a brand new festival and you’re not sure whether to promote it through your funders’ pages or give it an identity of its own.

Whatever the reason, we’ve broken down the pros, the drawbacks and the things to think about before setting up dedicated light festival social media pages. Read it from start to finish, or jump straight to the section you need.

In short

BID and council pages give you an audience from day one, but your festival becomes one message among many.
Your own pages give the festival its own identity, one place for visitor questions and an obvious account to tag.
Festival-only analytics make funding and stakeholder reports much easier to pull together.
The main drawback is resource. Dedicated pages need planning, content and community management.
It doesn’t have to be either/or. Your partners’ pages can still amplify yours.

In this article

The starting point: building from zero
Your festival gets an identity of its own
One place to nurture your visitors
Visitors know exactly who to tag
Festival-only analytics for your funding reports
Artists, curators and the wider light art world
The drawbacks of dedicated festival social media pages
Light festival social media doesn’t have to be either/or
FAQs

The starting point: building from zero

It goes without saying that one of the first things festivals think about is that you’re essentially starting from zero. Zero followers. Zero engagement. It’s a lot of work to build that momentum, and it can feel a bit scary.

That’s why a lot of light art festivals, both established and brand new, choose to promote their event through BID, council and other local partner pages instead. Those pages already have a local audience, and they’re often run by the organisations funding the festival, so it feels like the natural home.

In fact, Light Night Wigan was in exactly that position when we started working on it. 2024 was the festival’s first year with its own dedicated pages. Before then, it had only been promoted through the channels of Wigan Council and the festival’s curators, Things That Go On Things.

In that first year with its own channels, the festival’s page followers grew by 738%, and Facebook engagement during the festival rose by 453.9%. So, starting from zero is very doable. You just need a plan.

The bigger question is what your festival gets from a home of its own. It starts with where your posts actually sit:

On a shared BID or council page, your festival post sits between:

“Road closures this weekend” and “The Christmas market is back”

On your own pages, every post is about:

Your festival, your artists and the experience

Your festival gets an identity of its own

One of the biggest pros of having your own pages is that you can build a brand identity for your festival: what you want it to look, sound and feel like.

When you cross-promote through other local pages, your festival belongs to their brand. You can still brand up your assets, but your posts sit in someone else’s feed, mixed in with parking updates, business news and the next seasonal campaign.

By having your own social media pages, you have one central space to shout about your festival, the experience and the artists involved.

It also changes who you’re talking to. Someone who follows a town centre page is interested in the town centre. Someone who follows your festival page has chosen to hear about light art. That’s a deeper connection, and the platforms notice it too, because what people see is shaped by how they’ve interacted with an account before.

This matters even more if you’re part of a wider light network. Light Up The North (opens in a new tab), for example, brings together 16 light festivals across the North of England. Between 2023 and 2025, its festivals reached more than 1.7 million audience members (opens in a new tab) and showcased 386 artworks.

With its own pages, your festival can take part in that wider conversation as itself, connecting with other festivals, light artists and the people who travel to see their work.

One place to nurture your visitors

Dedicated pages give you one central space to look after visitors in the lead-up to the festival, while it’s on and once the lights go off.

And social media is where a lot of people look first. Eventbrite’s TRNDS 2025 report (opens in a new tab) found that 64% of Gen Z and 61% of Millennials find events on social media.

If someone has a question about tickets, access, parking or timings, your page is the obvious place to ask. They know it’s solely about your light art festival, so there’s no digging through unrelated posts to find an answer. That makes for a much better visitor experience.

Responding quickly matters, too. In Sprout Social’s 2025 Index (opens in a new tab), 73% of consumers said they’d buy from a competitor if a brand doesn’t respond on social. For a festival, that “competitor” might simply be another plan for the evening.

Before

Teasers, artist reveals, ticket releases and FAQs

During

Live Stories, real-time updates and visitor reshares

After

Highlights, thank-yous and a save-the-date for next year

When Light Night Wigan 2025 sold out in a matter of weeks, our focus shifted to community management: answering questions about ticket availability and keeping people excited. That’s far easier on a page that only exists for the festival.

Visitors know exactly who to tag

Having your own pages also means visitors know where to tag when they’re at the festival. You already have a clear identity, so when people post Stories, share photos or film the installations, there’s one obvious account to mention.

That means you can actively reshare their content without needing to leave space for other important local messages, the way a BID or council page would have to.

And that content is gold. The same Sprout Social research found that authenticity and relatability are the two traits consumers value most from brands on social, and there’s nothing more authentic than a visitor’s own video of your installations.

Every visitor Story is a recommendation for next year.

Ultimately, it builds a community. And a community is worth far more than a follower count. It’s the people who come back every year, bring their friends, answer each other’s questions in the comments and keep the conversation going between festivals.

For light festivals in particular, where the installations change every year, that community gives past visitors a reason to come back and helps new audiences discover you through people they already know. If you want some practical ways to get started, here are our tips for building social communities.

Light Night Wigan 2025. Photo: Evan Wilson

Festival-only analytics for your funding reports

As well as getting visitors involved, having your own pages means your analytics are completely separate. No more scrolling through a year of BID or council insights and manually pulling out the festival posts.

You know exactly how many people are following you for your festival. That reflects your overall audience engagement and gives you a solid foundation to build on for future events. You can also report on:

Followers gained for the festival
Reach and impressions across the campaign
Profile visits from people wanting to know more
Engagements such as comments, shares and saves
Video views across Reels and TikTok
Audience location to show your local reach

All of these are helpful engagement metrics for future funding reports. Arts Council England’s activity report form (opens in a new tab), for example, advises that you may need to collect evidence throughout your project, not just at the end.

On a shared page, lots of different messages contribute to the overall stats. A separate page makes those end-of-festival reports much easier, and it gives you a lot to shout about. For Light Night Wigan 2025, the festival’s own channels gave us clear numbers like these:

1.27M

views across Facebook, Instagram and TikTok

41,570

profile visits

3,571

new followers

Want a simple way to keep track of it all? Our social media analytics tracker is a good place to start.

Artists, curators and the wider light art world

Your audience isn’t just visitors. Other festival organisers, curators and prospective artists often check a festival’s social media when they’re researching programmes or deciding whether to apply for an open call.

A dedicated page works like a living portfolio. It shows the scale of the work you commission, how you present your artists and the audiences you bring in. That’s much harder to see when your festival is scattered across several partners’ feeds.

It also makes it easier to put artists front and centre. For Light Night Wigan, we paired footage from past festivals with the artists’ own voiceovers. Those videos helped the festival reach more than 320,000 views across Facebook and Instagram in its first year with its own pages.

Artists can tag the festival, share their commission with their own followers and collaborate on posts with you, so their audience becomes part of yours. A few artist-led ideas that work well on a festival’s own pages:

Artist spotlights
Installation sneak peeks
Behind-the-scenes builds
Artist voiceovers
Open call announcements
Collab posts with artists

The drawbacks of dedicated festival social media pages

It takes resource. Dedicated pages need someone to plan, create and post content, and to manage the community. Messages and comments tend to spike around ticket releases and during festival week, which is exactly when your team is busiest.

It takes time to grow. You’re starting from zero, so you won’t have the reach of an established BID or council page straight away.

You need a plan for the rest of the year. Most light festivals run for a few nights. A page that goes silent for ten months loses momentum, so you’ll want a light-touch plan for the off-season, such as artist features, behind-the-scenes updates, open calls and a save-the-date.

Someone needs to own it. Think about who holds the logins and admin access, especially if your festival is delivered by several partners or your team changes from year to year.

Before you set up your pages, ask:

Who will reply to messages during festival week?
Who owns the logins if the team changes?
What will we post between festivals?
What do our funders need to see in the final report?

Luckily, this is where we come in. We’re a social media marketing agency that specialises in arts festivals and cultural events, including light festivals. We integrate into your team to make sure you have everything you need, not only to promote your festival and attract visitors, but to capture the analytics you’ll need to report on it for future funding.

Weighing it up? Tell us a little about your festival and we’ll talk you through what would work for your team, timings and budget.

Get in touch

Light festival social media doesn’t have to be either/or

Setting up your own pages doesn’t mean cutting ties with your BID, council or funders’ channels. In fact, they become some of your most useful partners.

For Light Night Wigan, we worked closely with Things That Go On Things and Wigan Council, sharing content through the Wigan Council and Visit Wigan pages to reach even more local people. The festival had a home of its own, and its partners helped spread the word.

Instagram Collab posts are perfect for this. One post can appear on both your festival’s profile and your partner’s, reaching both audiences at once.

Think of it this way: your partners’ pages help people discover the festival, and your own pages give them somewhere to stay.

So, when you’re planning your festival’s social media, don’t just ask “Can we build an audience from zero?” Ask “Where do we want our festival’s community to live?”

Weighing up your festival’s own pages?

Get in touch

FAQs: light festival social media.

Does a light festival need its own social media pages?

It isn’t essential, but it’s usually worth it. Your own pages give the festival its own identity, one place for visitor questions, an obvious account to tag and festival-only analytics for funding reports. The trade-off is the time it takes to build and manage them.

Can we promote our festival through BID or council social media instead?

Yes, and plenty of festivals do, especially in their early years. You get an established local audience from day one. The downside is that your festival becomes one message among many, and its analytics are mixed in with everything else the page posts.

Can our BID or council still share our content if we have our own pages?

Absolutely, and they should. Shares, tags and Instagram Collab posts let your partners amplify your content to their audiences, while the festival keeps a home of its own.

Which social media platforms should a light festival be on?

For most local festivals, Facebook and Instagram are the place to start. TikTok can be a great addition for reaching new audiences: Light Night Wigan’s first year on TikTok generated 89,000 views. Start with the platforms your audience already uses, and that you have the time to manage well.

When should we set up our festival’s social media pages?

As early as you can, ideally well before your first programme announcement or ticket release. That gives you time to build a following, so there’s an audience waiting when the big news lands.

What should a festival post between festivals?

You don’t need to post every day. Artist features, behind-the-scenes updates, throwbacks to past installations, open calls and a save-the-date will keep the page warm until the next build-up starts.

How can social media analytics support festival funding reports?

Dedicated pages give you festival-only numbers, such as followers, reach, profile visits, engagements, video views and audience location. Decide what you want to measure before the campaign starts, so you can collect the evidence as you go.

Who should manage a light festival’s social media?

It could be someone in-house, a freelancer or an agency. Whoever it is needs time for community management, especially around ticket releases and during festival week, when messages and comments spike.

Written by Becca Wheble

Becca is the founder of Silly Goose Digital. She’s worked in social media marketing since 2018, across B2C and B2B brands, and now specialises in arts festivals and cultural events. More about Becca

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