Tunnel vision

Yesterday I got the opportunity to go under the town hall to explore the tunnels. I'd asked one of the organisers of Light Night, so I could check them out before submitting my proposal, and he gallantly braved the ghost (yup, there's apparently a ghost, a murderer called Charlie Peace!) to show me round.

When Leeds Town Hall was built in 1858, there were 13 prison cells, offices for the police and accomodation for the warder built into the basement. New cells were later built under the front steps. Passages led from these cells to the courtroom, with locked gates keeping it secure.

The tunnels themselves were a lot bigger than I remembered from last year, the only time I've been down there. With all the lights on, they were quite similar to the corridors at work with high ceilings and archways:



However, as soon as you switched the lights off, they became the passages of imprisonment that they used to be, and you could quite imagine a ghost sweeping up and down the corridor:



I pulled out Blue Canary (the name the new prototype has acquired), and it lit up the tunnel a bit, and suddenly it was easy to see just how amazing 1000 cranes could look. I think they'll totally transform the space.

There were a lot of pipes and hooks and things that could easily support the cranes, and the ceilings (which I would say were about 10ft high) were plenty high enough that they can be strung over people's heads out of the way:



I'm completely convinced that it could all go ahead, and that if it does, it will look really really amazing. I'm also completely convinced that this is the right installation, in the right place, and I'm even more excited than I was before.

Now I have to do all the paperwork.