A CULTURAL extravaganza is being planned for the night Liverpool bids farewell to its showcase 2008 year. It will start with a free waterfront party at the Pier Head featuring spectacular lighting, big-screen productions, and fireworks from a barge on the Mersey.

The city’s cultural institutions have joined together to hold a series of late-night openings as part of the Transition Light Night.

The special evening will be on Saturday, January 10, a year to the day the city officially launched its showcase year, and will mark the transition to 09 – Liverpool’s Year of the Environment.

Last night, Liverpool Council leader Cllr Warren Bradley said: “What better way to celebrate the city’s transition from 08 than to begin with a party at the waterfront where so much of this city’s story began.”

An hour-long “People’s Celebration” at the Pier Head will start at 6pm and use the £100m of regeneration projects at the waterfront location as a theme.

The gigantic waterfront window of the new Museum of Liverpool, currently under construction, will be used as a 27ft by 80ft cinema screen.

A film review of Capital of Culture year will be shown, with smaller screens also being placed on the new Mersey Ferry terminal, also under construction, and the Echo Arena.

There will also be a lantern installation on the new Leeds-Liverpool Canal link, an arts and crafts market at Mann Island and drum and dance performances.

A ceremonial handover to the cities of Linz, in Austria, and Vilnius, in Lithuania – the European Capitals of Culture for 2009 – will take place.

And representatives from London Olympics 2012 will be present to launch Britain’s Cultural Olympiad.