Help Fix The Stokey Stars

Aim

The Stokey illuminated stars are starting to fail, and we may not be able to put them up this year. Help us restore them for the future!

Hello! We're artists Andy D’Cruz and Jonathan Hogg. You may have seen us wandering around in our boiler suits or know us as the "star men." We’ve been working together in Stoke Newington since 2009 as Output Arts, making installation artworks and running community projects.

You may remember us from the wind harp at BREATHE Festival in 2016 or the huge Constellations lantern project we did with See You In Stokey in 2022. We’re currently resident artists at Stamford Hill Library, but we spent over 20 years working above Stoke Newington Library until it closed for refurbishment.

The Stars

In 2020, the first lockdown hit and we were unable to work in our studio at the library. We’d just received a big commission to make two huge light artworks for an outdoor show and were in a panic. Luckily for us, The Old Church arts venue stepped in to save us. As they were closed to the public, they kindly let us borrow the church, providing us with a big, safe space to work in.

As a thank you, we used up our leftover materials to make an installation for the churchyard. The result was Twinkle, a set of huge, illuminated stars. It had been such a difficult year for everyone, and we really hoped that the sight of them would cheer people up.

What we hadn’t anticipated was how much of a popular fixture they would become, and we’ve been asked to put them up again every year since. In 2022 we also made new ones for the top of the tree by the fire station and St Paul’s West Hackney.

What we need

We’ve already had many people ask us about when they will go up this year, but the stars are really showing their age. They’ve taken a fair bit of damage from being outdoors over the winter for years (including one of them getting a savage beating a few years ago). There are now 10 that we look after, but we don't get paid to do this. We’ve kept them going this long with ad hoc repairs and cobbled-together parts, but the custom electronics are starting to fail, and we don’t think that they'll make it through this winter.

If we’re to put them back up and continue showing them, then we really need to do some repairs. In keeping with our reuse ethos, we’ll hang onto as much as we can from the originals, but we need to make new electronics and replace some of the panels.

It’s been a genuine pleasure putting the stars up each year and we love hearing how much people enjoy them. If you can help us out, then together we’ll be able to see them into the future.

If we raise extra, then we'll put it towards making something magical for next year…

Funding method

Keep what you raise – this project will receive all pledges made by 30th November 2026 at 3:26pm