White Light Illuminates the Capital for London Lumiere Festival 2018 - White Light
Explore White Light: White Light | HireWL | SalesWL | ShopWL | VenuesWL | SmartStage®

White Light Illuminates the Capital for London Lumiere Festival 2018


Waterlicht © Caroline BanksThe Lumiere Festival sees famous landmarks across London brought to life with innovative lighting displays. It recently returned to London for the second time following the success of the first edition in January 2016. Following its work on the previous Festival, White Light was called upon to provide its services once again for the free outdoor light festival in 2018.

The London Lumiere Festival showcases the capital’s spectacular and iconic architecture and streets, through the vision and work of UK and international artists. In 2016, it attracted an estimated 1.3 million visits over four nights. The year’s edition had an expanded footprint extending north to south, from Kings Cross, through Fitzrovia, Mayfair, and London’s West End, to Trafalgar Square, Westminster, Victoria, South Bank and Waterloo.

Following the success of 2016’s Festival, along with WL’s extensive experience in lighting some of London’s most iconic buildings, the company was once again called upon by Unusual Services on behalf of Artichoke (arts charity and the UK’s leading producer of art in the public realm) to support this world-class festival.

Spectral © Mishmash MediaWL provided lighting equipment and technical support to 11 projects across London.  The 11 individual installations were overseen by WL’s Senior Account Manager Dominic Yates and WL’s Senior Project Manager Martin Strods.

Dominic comments: “We worked on the previous Lumiere Festival and were called upon to do so once again this year. This is largely due to our experience of working in a number of the iconic London venues where the Festival took place, along with our strong working relationship with the client and other suppliers involved”.

The WL team spent two weeks at the company’s extensive pre-rig space in Wimbledon in order to prepare the equipment. Following this, the team moved into Central London where the on-site installation took six days.

Northern Lights © Matthew AndrewsThe installations that WL worked on included ‘Waterlicht’ at Kings Cross, by Dutch artist and innovator Daan Roosegaarde.  ‘Waterlicht’ was inspired by people’s changing relationship to water and the risk faced if action is not taken to tackle global warming and rising sea levels. In Grosvenor Square. the public enjoyed interacting with ‘Northern Lights’ by Swedish Artist Aleksandra Stratimirovic. This was a dynamic light-art piece inspired by the enthralling experience of the Aurora Borealis.

To bring each project to life, WL drew on a range of equipment including SGM P5 LED Floods, Elation Six Par 200s, ETC Source Fours, cabling and mains distribution infrastructure.

Dominic concludes: “This year’s Lumiere Festival was the most ambitious yet and it was fantastic to play a role in bringing some of London’s most recognisable landmarks to life using the very latest lighting technology”.

Photos courtesy of Caroline Banks, Matthew Andrews and Mishmash Media.