We Are Warriors: Coming Together to Push the Darkness Away

Between sunset and high tide on 16 and 17 October, Knightstone Causeway will transform into a bridge of light and sound, creating a space for remembrance, reflection and connection. Come and step into the moment and add your light to the display! You can also add your voice, joining a roar that will travel across the world – all the way to the coast of Australia. 

We Are Warriors is a sound-and-light installation ‘about coming together to push the darkness away – whatever kind of darkness that means for you,’ says Helen Cole, CEO and Artistic Director of In Between Time (IBT), an arts charity based in Weston. Created in 2018, it has already been experienced by more than 20,000 people: first in Bristol, then in Brighton, Manchester and Sydney. Each light represents someone loved and lost. The sound piece – ‘a beautiful composition of roars and sighs and lullabies’ – is woven from hundreds of voices of women and girls from every community the installation has visited.

Back on their home turf, We Are Warriors is trying something new: taking it all outside. ‘We talked a lot about possible indoor locations, but I kept coming back to Knightstone Causeway’, says Helen. ‘For the Good Grief Festival, it’s rich with symbolism: it suggests that loss is something we all carry, and that when shared, it can connect us across a community, creating a bridge of light amidst profound darkness.’ Staging it outdoors comes with challenges, including a very tight time window because of the incoming tide. But that, too, seems right. As Helen puts it, ‘We’re inviting people to join us so that together we can fill the causeway in the time that we have’. 

How have people reacted to the Warriors experience so far? Not surprisingly, that varies. ‘Some are drawn in by the lights and spend five or 10 minutes there,’ says Helen, ‘but they’ll often say “Thank you, I loved it”, as if this was all they needed. Others go much deeper: one visitor stayed for seven hours, completely absorbed. And then there are the moments that catch Helen off guard – like tiny children emerging wide‑eyed, saying, ‘I felt like I was in the sky’. 

People can often find the experience deeply moving: ‘I think it taps into some of the emotions we all carry around but keep a lid on,’ says Helen. ‘It helps us loosen that lid, giving us space to feel.’ It can also make us want to talk, and volunteers and IBT crew are on hand throughout to introduce the work, hear how people feel and listen to their stories. But just as powerful is the simple act of taking a light that represents someone important in your life, carrying it, and placing it amongst thousands of others: ‘It folds you and your story into something larger,’ says Helen.

There’s another kind of connection planned too, and a louder one, which everyone is invited to join on Friday: a communal roar sent across the world. Not sure of your roar? A free creative workshop, Develop Your Roar, led by Breathing Fire Playback Theatre, will explore voice, grief, loss and remembrance through movement, sound and collective expression. At sunset, the participants will then walk down to the Causeway and roar together out to sea, surrounded by the lights. But that’s only half of it: ‘We’ll record our roar and send it over to Sydney, where they’re staging their own We Are Warriors’, Helen explains. ‘They’ll play our roar there; then people in Sydney will roar back at their sunset – creating a global exchange of sound that pushes the darkness away and calls out to those we’ve lost, and to each other across the oceans.’ 

As part of Good Grief Weston. Click here to find out more.