The Opening Ceremony of the European Capital of Culture - Our partners' contributions

The spectacular opening ceremony of European Capital of Culture Aarhus 2017 was a gigantic production with more than 4.000 active participants and close to 70.000 people in the audience. Follow us behind the scenes of the logistic and technical feat of strength. 

The opening ceremony on January 21st marked the beginning of the year as Capital of Culture. The ceremony culminated at the harbour of Aarhus with the biggest projection show in Danish history. The many thousand audience members experienced it live, while 825.000 Danes watched the ceremony on television. The great public attention surrounding the ceremony was also visible on the website aarhus2017.dk, which on the day of the opening had 285.939 page views. 12.000 new users downloaded the accompanying Aarhus 2017-app. The website traffic peaked on Saturday evening January 21st with 2.450 requests for images and files per second.

For the parade procession through the city, thousands of volunteers carried the luminous hand painted boats, lanterns and six Viking ships with a length of 10-14 meters. The glowing Viking ships were built by British artists from The Lantern Company and a large group of volunteers. By public request, the six ships were subsequently exhibited at the Museum of Frigate Jylland, which has since recorded a rise in their visitor numbers by 30 pct.

Our partners' contributions to the opening ceremony:

// 694 lamps, 140 meter LED light bands, 14 km signal cables, 8 km power cords, 5 sets of wireless DMX desks, 5 lighting desks and a 3D studio for preprogramming. Further 40 special mountings, 1 hotel room for placement of spotlights and 282 loudspeakers. Altogether, an electricity consumption of 3.500 ampere was delivered by Nordic Rentals A/S.

// 124 lamps for illuminating the City Hall Tower delivered by Martin Professional

// 2 low noise alternators (65 dB) and power for the celebration delivered by Godik

// 6 smaller alternators for running 8-12 speakers on the Viking ships, 6 computers and 5 video projectors, installed with special lenses for projection of films delivered by AV Center

// 1,5 km fence, 50 portable toilets for the audience and 4 gigantic towers for the finale at Aarhus Harbour delivered by Mars EventSupply

// 12 Panasonic 30.000 ansi lumen laser projectors, 2 mixers and 2 broadcast systems for the biggest projection show in Danish history delivered, produced and live streamed by Proshop Europe Media

// More than a hundred kilos of chili con carne for the choir of 800 singers, delivered by Fazer Food Services A/S

// Approximately 80 liters of soup for the volunteering Rethinkers delivered by Koldkærgård

// Hundreds of sandwiches for boatbuilders delivered by Bistro Immervad

Read more about our partners here.