This Friday, November 16, we (Newmindspace) will be hosting our very first lightsaber battle! This summer at Burning Man, we witnessed a 10,000-person lightsaber battle put on by a camp called Watto's Junkyard, easily the largest lightsaber battle since the Jedi Civil War. However, with our limited resources, we realized that without a large donation from a rich weirdo (which are plentiful in San Francisco), we would probably not be able to get the plastic, LED-lit, colour-changing expanding kind without some sort of fundraising "starter battle" first.

Looking once again to San Francisco, we stumbled upon a West Coast group called the Cardboard Tube Fighting League. A few e-mails later, we got the specs for the tubes they used, and we now have 1,600 of them in our loft. We decided the easiest way to make them glow would be colouring them with neon spray paint and shining massive ultraviolet cannons on the crowd, powered by batteries charged with Bullfrog Power. (By the way, if you want to help spray paint the tubes, come to 1153 Queen Street West, east side of the building, from 3 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Wednesday, November 14.)

This Friday, November 16 at 9:30 p.m., we will assemble in front of the Bloor Street West entrance of the Royal Ontario Museum, which now bears an uncanny resemblance to a Jawa Sandcrawler. The plaza in front, Toronto's newest public space, is begging to be activated. By the way, admission is free 45 minutes before closing, so check out the museum before the battle! Players are asked not to begin until the signal, and optional donations will be gratefully collected to fund future battles and events.

The official after-party is RANDOMLAND at CiRCA, 126 John Street. Featuring Norwegian electrorockers DATAROCK, we are pleased and honoured to be enlivening Toronto's largest indoor playground with a bunch of crazy Jedi and Sith! Check out the Facebook listing and full flyer for what will probably end up looking like the Star Wars Cantina.

Photo from Burning Man of the lightsabers we wish to acquire by cyntergomes on Flickr.

Kevin Bracken is a co-founder of Newmindspace, and really likes things that glow.