A street in central London has become the city’s first to host aerial Ramadan Lights which will delight visitors for the month to come.
Looking, to casual users, candidly not unlike Christmas decorations, you’ll quickly realise they’re very different, not indirectly helped by the Happy Ramadan signs at either end.
It may seem odd to put Ramadan lights up next to Chinatown, but the area also has a sizeable Muslim community, and there were plans recently to convert a basement under the Trocadero into a mosque. The plans were cancelled following a high volume of racist complaints.
What was very noticeable about these lights though were the people stopping to take photos. Unlike Christmas lights which we get every year, these Ramadan Lights are new, and novel, and attracting attention.
Families had come to see them, ladies taking photos and shyly smiling when they saw me watching them having fun, and kids pointing at, well, seemingly everything.
The best spot to get photos is at either end of the street, and a pedestrian crossing has become a hotspot, and as the lights turn green to cross, people stop in the middle to get their photos. Dads send the kids a bit further along to get poses, then rush off.
Taxi drivers toot their horns as the pedestrian crossing turns red again and the crowds scatter. It’s become the west end’s very own Abbey Road pedestrian crossing.
The lights will hang on Coventry Street between Piccadilly Circus to Leicester Square, until Friday 21 April 2023.
As Ramadan is a lunar festival and its date changes each year, there will come a point when the area could be filled with Ramadan and Christmas lights sitting side by side. That’ll happen in 2031, when Ramadan starts on 15th December.
Financial support for the project came initially from the Aziz Foundation, and thereafter other community organisations and public donations. The Lights are attached to Aziz family properties, who gave permission for the lights to be installed above Coventry Street.
