This July, Trinity Community Arts presents Cast Light, a new immersive installation by internationally acclaimed artists Squidsoup, transforming the historic Pump Room at Jacobs Wells Baths into a captivating environment of light, sound and space.

Taking place on 18 and 19 July, alongside Bristol’s annual Harbour Festival, the ticketed experience invites visitors into one of Bristol’s most significant heritage buildings as it undergoes ongoing restoration during the city's annual Harbour Festival. Designed as an audience-led encounter for small groups, Cast Light offers visitors the chance to move freely through an evolving landscape of illuminated forms and spatial sound.

Recognised as pioneers in the fields of light, sound and technology-based art, Squidsoup have created large-scale works experienced by millions of people worldwide, from Burning Man to Alexandra Palace. Their installations have captivated audiences across six continents.

Cast Light is a new artwork comprising an arching arrangement   of towering columns of light accompanied by an expansive soundscape. Installed within the atmospheric surroundings of the Pump Room, the work explores ideas of scale, connection and our relationship with the natural world. The result is an experience that shifts between moments of wonder and quiet contemplation.

“Cast Light began as an exploration of scale, presence and our relationship to the environments we inhabit. The work shifts as people move through it, creating moments that can feel vast and enveloping, but also deeply personal. The title is a nod to the venue - a play on the solidity of the space and its cast iron construction of areas previously never seen before, against the fluidity of light moving through it. The artwork asks you to explore how we appear in the light, and how it transforms the space around us. The Pump Room at Jacobs Wells Baths is a space shaped by human activity and industrial history, and we’re excited to invite audiences into that conversation through light and sound in such a unique heritage site.”

- Squidsoup

The installation is situated in a space that once powered the building itself;. The Pump Room housed the furnace boilers that heated the natural spring waters flowing through Jacobs Wells Baths, making it the operational heart of the Victorian complex.

Visitors are invited to experience both the artwork and the architecture in a setting that encourages personal exploration and reflection.

As part of Jacobs Wells Baths radical citizen-led approach, Trinity Community Arts have created opportunities for local residents to inform its design and development. In recognition of the relationship with its closest members, free tickets for Cast Light will be offered to residents living in neighbouring Brandon House and St Peter’s House.

Cast Light forms part of Trinity’s Art of the Possible series at Jacobs Wells Baths, a programme that opens the site to artists and audiences during its transformation. It is one of a small number of public events taking place ahead of the building’s major reopening in 2029 as a landmark cultural venue and centre for citizen-powered arts in the South West.

The event is proudly presented as part of the Bristol Harbour Festival fringe activity.

About Squidsoup

Squidsoup are internationally recognised artists working with light, sound and digital technologies to create immersive environments and participatory experiences. Their work has been presented worldwide at festivals, galleries and public spaces, earning critical acclaim for its innovative approach to audience engagement and sensory experience.

What the critics say

“The Best Live Show in the World”

Mixmag on Squidsoup’s collaboration with Four Tet

”…a sincere and disarming electronic experience”

The Guardian on Squidsoup

Select slots will feature a live dance performance.

Event Information

Cast Light

By Squidsoup presented by Trinity Community Arts

Dates: 18–19 July 2026 | Private View 17 July

Venue: Jacobs Wells Baths, Bristol

Tickets availble via Headfirst: Booking required | £3

Saturday | Sunday

Part of the Art of the Possible series and Bristol Harbour Festival Fringe programme.

Made possible thanks to National Lottery players.

As part of the Saving Jacobs Wells Baths development phase, funded by The National Lottery Heritage Fund, heritage engagement specialists Local Learning have been working with 5 MArch Students from University of the West of England (UWE), City of Bristol College students on the Pathways to Independent Living course, Children from Willow Park Primary and accessibility practitioners Daisy Holder and David Ellington, to understand how accessibility in heritage spaces is not a nice to have but fundamental to how the building will function as a civic space.

With Phase 1 capital repairs live, plans for Phase 2 renovations will attempt to address some of the issues that have long held the building back. The former Victorian bathhouse suffers from being largely inaccessible with no lift provision and a complex arrangement of split levels and changes in floor height, meaning there is no level access throughout the building. This has historically limited who can use the space also limiting its viability. The inability for some participants to physically access the building as part of the design works limited their ability to engage fully in the design process, reinforcing that without full accessibility, the building cannot support meaningful participation or co-creation as a civic and cultural hub.

Through co-design sessions, disabled young people worked with the architecture students from UWE to develop proposals for a fully accessible youth space within the Baths. Their insights, grounded in lived experience of navigating the city, directly informed spatial design, circulation, and the social use of the building.

Many participants had no prior experience of youth spaces, reflecting the sustained closure of youth provision and limited access to dedicated, inclusive spaces within the immediate locality. This underscores both a critical infrastructure gap and the importance of designing environments that are genuinely accessible from the outset.

The student’s work also begun to articulate a unifying creative vision for the Baths that will underpin the building’s reimagining as a cultural powerhouse for Central Bristol Drawing on the building’s layered histories and future potential, UWE architecture student Nghi developed a framework that distilled these diverse narratives into five overarching themes: Resistance, Rhythm, Reflection, Flow and Imprint.

These themes capture the Baths’ evolution, from civic infrastructure to dance space to future cultural hub and provide a conceptual foundation for how the building could be experienced, programmed and interpreted.

The students work is informing technical designs being created by Architects PH3 Design. As part of the design consultation PH3 have also worked with accessibility specialists WECIL to refine and improved accessibility of the site, as part of Phase 2 capital work plans. A full accessibility audit can be seen here.

Sean Redmond, Architect from Ph3 Design said:

“Ensuring we weave accessibility throughout ever changing floor levels of this complex, listed building, has been a significant challenge that has benefitted hugely from the consultation and engagement events that the team has organised. We’re determined to ensure that when we’re finished, everyone – irrespective of their access needs - will be able to access all areas of the building and we can’t wait to welcome people of all access abilities into this magnificent new community and cultural hub.”

Through this process, children shared their experiences of the public realm, what feels welcoming, unfamiliar or out of reach, showing that accessibility is not just physical, but also about permission, ownership and cultural connection.

The work developed through this programme was presented publicly at a Reflection & Sharing session on 23 April 2026, bringing together partners, artists, students and community participants to reflect on learning to date and explore the building’s future potential.

UWE students talked through their design proposals demonstrating how early-stage architectural thinking can be meaningfully informed by people with lived experience, embedding accessibility, inclusion and social use at the heart of the design process. The event also created space for reflection, linking past and present learning to future work.

An interactive workshop led by Colourful Minds formed part of this wider engagement. It invited attendees to explore heritage, place and belonging, building on earlier work with children and young people including the Bristol–Bordeaux twinning exchange, funded by Bristol City Council, where children from after-school clubs at Evergreen, Hannah More, Easton and St Nicks primaries (with Willow Park to follow) created cardboard models of landmark buildings in both cities - such as La Rocher de Palmer, La Cité du Vin, Bristol Museum and Easton Jamia Masjid. Also facilitated by Laura from Colourful Minds, these sessions encouraged creativity, observation and a deeper connection to heritage.

The event presented a series of site activations created as part of Art of the Possible, a pilot activation programme exploring how artists can work within the Baths during its restoration. To date, 11 Bristol-based artists have responded to the space across disciplines including music, spoken word and dance, helping to test how the building might function as a future cultural hub.

This work demonstrates the value of embedding creative, community-led thinking within the development process, ensuring the restored Baths are not only physically accessible, but also culturally meaningful and legible to those who use them. It shows that investment in accessibility goes beyond compliance, enabling Jacobs Wells Baths to function as inclusive social infrastructure shaped by and for the communities it serves. It reinforces the role of heritage spaces as welcoming and relevant to those historically excluded from cultural and civic life, and highlights accessibility as a collective process, strengthened through ongoing collaboration and knowledge-sharing between practitioners, participants and future users.

Photos by Shamphat Productions