Festival of Light
Following the success of the 2017 and 2018 Festival of Light at Westquay, for 2019 We Are Placemaking were asked to produce the event across 3 locations with a brand new look and feel.
In 2017 and 2018, the festival included a new narrative each year for the digital mapping against the city walls, along with an interactive musical installation, a reflective LED maze, field of glowing spheres communicating between one another with a flow of coloured changing light, interactive light orbs and additional projections on the city walls. 2019 saw The Festival of Light across three key Hammerson locations in Southampton, Birmingham and Dublin.
Andy Collyer, General Manager at Westquay
“We were thrilled to host our third ‘Festival of Light’ at Westquay this year. It is fast becoming a firm favourite in our annual programme of events and highlights that the centre is not only a mecca for shoppers and diners but is also a dynamic space for cultural events. This year’s installations were truly mind-blowing, engaging all the senses and helped to attract over 100,000 visitors over the ten day event. The festival also raised Westquay’s profile as it featured in both local and national press, creating a real buzz for the centre and kick-starting the 2019 Esplanade events programme.”
Catherine O’Toole, Regional Marketing Manager for Ireland
“With Festival of Lights now a prominent attraction in top European destinations it was incredible to be able to bring this to Dundrum as a first in Dublin. The core of Hammerson’s central Marketing strategy is to drive economies of scale and share learnings with our Shopping Centres across the UK, Ireland and France and this super event is a great demonstration of this in practice. Sharing the planning, cost and execution across a number of centres made an event which would have been out of reach, into a feasible concept.”
Kathryn Malloch, Head of Customer Experience
“Consumers are increasingly looking for unique and memorable experiences when they visit our flagship destinations, and that is what Festival of Light 2019 was all about. Events like this not only drive footfall, they also lead to increased sales for the brands in our destinations, and attract new shoppers who might not be frequent visitors. Festival of Light is just one part of the £2m experiential events programme we have planned for 2019. Exciting upcoming events include The Maze at Westquay, a 400m extravaganza with a hidden surprise at its centre.”FOL-Dundrum-2-1
Challenge
This year we were asked to bring a new look and feel to the Festival of Light, especially as we were going to be travelling with the installations we needed to think about durability and to think about how guests could interact more with the installations. We researched a number of light artists and whittled it down to 5 installations for the festival, all that had some kind of playful interactive element to them.
Control No Control
Sunrise
Light Battle
Wave and
The Planetarium
Control No Control, Wave and Light Battle made it to all three locations Southampton, Birmingham and Dundrum. While The Planetarium and Sunrise were more bespoke to just the Southampton site.
Delivery
Supplier sourcing & management
Event Production & management through build, break and live
Festival of Light Curation
Artistic Design
Health & Safety consultancy
Technical Production Management
Creative Production Management
Security Management
WESTQUAY – SOUTHAMPTON
Results: 3rd Year
101,869 engagement footfall counts
Overall 2,367,171 impressions delivered on social media
Fully booked restaurants each evening around Westquay
Covered by The Telegraph, The Times Online and The Daily Echo Online
BIRMINGHAM – BULLRING
Results: 1st Year
66,912 engagement footfall counts
Covered by BBC Midlands News
DUNDRUM – DUBLIN
Results: 1st Year
66,836 engagement footfall counts
1,000,000 social media impressions across all platforms
Covered by Lovin Dublin, and Here Ireland
Kathryn Malloch, Head of Customer Experience, said:
“Consumers are increasingly looking for unique and memorable experiences when they visit our flagship destinations, and that is what Festival of Light 2019 was all about. Events like this not only drive footfall, they also lead to increased sales for the brands in our destinations, and attract new shoppers who might not be frequent visitors. Festival of Light is just one part of the £2m experiential events programme we have planned for 2019. Exciting upcoming events include The Maze at Westquay, a 400m extravaganza with a hidden surprise at its centre.”
