London’s International Ice Sculpting Festival
A unique visual spectacle takes place in London during the 11th to the 13th January 2013. Teams from around the world will be in the city to take part in the 2013 Ice Sculpting Festival and competition. Due to the popularity of the event this year’s festival has been extended to cover three whole days and sees more international teams than ever taking part. The event is not purely a visual thing, there is also the opportunity to take part yourself and create something in ice of your own, as well as being able to vote for the winning sculpture. What makes this festival even more popular is that fact that all of the activities and events within it are free to everyone.
Canary Wharf on Ice
Once again London’s iconic Canary Wharf will play host to this festival of ice. Massive blocks of sparkling ice will once again be transformed into things of breathtaking beauty. The theme of this year’s competition is linked to NASA’s current mission to Mars and has themes entitled ‘Wonders of the Universe’ and ‘Infinity’, which look set to see some incredible creations being brought into existence. Teams come to the city from all over the world in order to take part in the event, and this year sculpting teams are expected from the USA, Bulgaria, Spain, Portugal, The Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden, Latvia, Hungary and France, as well as the UK team of course.
This festival is one of the top events in the winter calendar and this will be the fourth year that Canary Wharf has played host. Whilst events will be hosted throughout Canary Wharf the main events will take place at Wood Wharf, which is where you should head to see the very best in competitive ice sculpting. Visitors can take advantage of sculpting master classes, make their mark on the huge ice graffiti wall, have fun in the snow pit or play ice chess. A wonderful winter market will be running alongside all of the other attractions and a magical laser show will bring the northern lights into the heart of London.
Ice Sculpting Competitions
Armed with imagination and a range of sculpting tools, teams will set to work on a glistening two metre ice block – each team working to create a piece of sculpture that epitomises the theme of this year’s competition. Unusually the winners will not only be decided by a team of expert judges this year, the competing teams will also have a say in who they think best captured the theme of the competition, the winning team in this category will receive a special award. In the singles competition the artists are presented with a one metre ice block and have just two and a half hours to complete their master pieces. One of the most popular pars of the sculpting competition is the freestyle element – each sculptor can create whatever they wish out of their piece of ice and the winning pieces will be decided by the audience themselves.
