In 1879, a year before Edison patented the light bulb, an English seaside town was attracting out-of-season tourists by lighting up its promenade with carbon arc lamps, in what a brochure at the time proudly proclaimed to be “artificial sunshine.” Those illuminations, much expanded, have kept Blackpool on the map ever since, despite changes in British vacation trends and it became an established annual feature in 1929. The lights provide year-round skilled jobs for local lighting and design professionals, in addition to providing a huge boost for the hospitality community, proving that investing in creativity can pay off for the local economy—in this instance to the tune of more than £250 million for the town each year.
Blackpool is on the Northeast coast of England facing the Irish Sea and in addition to the Illuminations it is known for the Blackpool Tower (inspired by the Eiffel Tower), and several Victorian-era pleasure piers.
All of these structures have been enhanced by the Illuminations, as has a portion of the town center, which has a themed event every year known as LightPool. The actual Blackpool Illuminations have grown to encompass six miles of road along the seafront ensuring that tourists can visit in their cars in almost any weather conditions. For the last 20 years, new features have been designed by creative curator, celebrity designer and television personality Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen.
(Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen with one of the famous Blackpool beach donkeys.)
Currently, the Illuminations team are gearing up for the 100th anniversary in 2029.
Live Design talked to Richard Williams, who began his career as an electrical engineer and is now the head of Blackpool Illuminations, about the lighting display that has delighted and inspired so many, including lighting and production designers Willie Williams and (local) Durham Marenghi.
Live Design: How long have you been involved with the Illuminations?
Richard Williams: Thirty-nine years! And we do something different every year, which I think is the beauty of the role. I see it as a very prestigious position because we are looking after what I think of as a true icon. I started out as an electrician, fixing street lighting in Blackpool for three or four years, and trained for my qualifications while working. I knocked on some doors to get my foot in the door at the Illuminations and haven’t looked back!
LD: Has it changed much since you started?
RW: We've got a huge purpose-built factory close to the runway at Blackpool Airport and we buy the raw materials and build everything ourselves. In a way, we are bit like a props department, we've got joiners (woodworkers), engineers, structural experts, artists, everything we could want. We are also able to do more and more for events outside the Blackpool Illuminations, including special commissions for artists, and things like the piece we made for Leicester Square a few months ago, and Christmas displays.
This year, to commemorate the 85th anniversary of the Battle of Britain we designed a full-size light up Spitfire for the opening ceremony. (Blackpool is home to Hangar 42, the Spitfire Visitor Center.)
We love lights and we're lighting nerds, really.
LD: How has the process changed from the injection-molded plastic static characters of the past?
RW: Everything has changed now. We used to do everything by hand, including carving a mold by hand. Over the past four years we've been in investing in what I call ‘Illuminations Advanced Manufacturing.’ So currently, we have six KuKa.CNC system software robots that do all the 3D carving for us. They are also really good for cutting materials. In the last two years, we've also invested in a 3D printer with a robotic 3D pinch on an arm. It can print five meters by a meter prints. That has reduced our lead times and the cost of manufacturing after the initial investment.
We also started the transition to LEDs very early, we were one of the first places in the UK to trial outdoor LED flood lights back in 1999. Since then, we've invested more and more in LED technology and we are now at a point where we've reduced our energy consumption by 85% from what it used to be. It's been huge for us and is getting better every year, last year we managed to achieve another 1% in savings. We were surprised at the figures to be honest, but it just shows you what you can do, even in the Blackpool environment. It's a very, very harsh environment for lighting. Lots of wind off the sea, lots of salt in the air, so we have to work very closely with suppliers for anything we get. Anything we produce or contract for has been tested and we expect to last at least a three-year minimum out there. It is a six-mile run for cables and we have fixtures on 526 columns along the seafront.
We use a lot of Studio Due and Robe and look for IP ratings and always specify marine coatings, the same that are used on cruise ships.
In addition to light fixtures, we use Panasonic projectors for projection mapping effects on the Blackpool Tower for special events. We have a team that does animations for that. They do things a little differently because the Blackpool Tower is covered in LEDs, so we take control of the lighting and integrate the projections to create a story or film. We have a trailer that is a bit like a outside broadcast control room for those types of events and time code them with a soundtrack from a large integrated sound system.
For control we use ChamSys MaDS and we have a fiber optic connection that runs the length of the promenade and we can log in remotely. A lot of the display is automated so we don’t have to control directly.
Years ago, for some of the larger set pieces, we built in rather large electronic controls – if you can imagine a garden shed round the back for each one – but now we can automate them.
LD: Did you do anything special for the opening this year?
RW: We enhanced the show with some Pangolin/Kvant lasers this year and there is always a celebrity switching on the lights, this year was [pop star] Olly Murs, and he led the countdown and then the whole Tower and seafront lit up with a choreographed show including fireworks to one of his songs. Incidentally, Blackpool also hosts the World Fireworks Championships.
LD: How long do the Illuminations go on for?
RW: Before Covid, we switched them on on the Friday after the August Bank Holiday and ran for 66 nights. But during Covid, we extended the run because it was safe for people to visit in cars and we have continued to keep the show through the Christmas season to January 4 every year since then.
Christmas is busy in Blackpool but we didn’t run them in the past because of the weather. In fact, 20 years ago I would have said you were mad to try to extend them, but weather patterns have changed, we get fewer gales now, although stronger, and they are mostly after Christmas. But even 66 nights was worth £250 million to the local economy, so it will be a lot more now.
LD: How do you keep the designs fresh?
RW: We have our own artists and we design a lot of things, but we also mix it up and give opportunities to other artists. They haven’t necessarily worked in lighting before, which is interesting. This year we've got Jason Wilsher-Mills who has done a nice section for us. [Wilsher-Mills is known for celebrating disability and his working-class roots in the north of England.]
We've also worked with Robert E. Fuller who is a wildlife film maker and artist. He some of his drawings that we've realized in light and put in the display. Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen does a display for us every year, this year he designed “Lush Puppies” – dogs in period clothing, and “Guardians of the North" which are three large dragons.
We have a heritage section of the display where we have some large tableaux from the past up in the cliffs area but we rotate a lot of things through so that people always see new things. We have about seven million visitors a year and many of them are repeat visitors. It is primarily a drive-through display but there are also areas where we have standalone installations you can experience up close. Three years ago we debuted Odyssey, six 10-meter-tall sea creatures designed by Jack Irving. It is resting this year but is very popular.
LD: In addition to an economic boost for the town, it seems to be an important training and employment event.
RW: We worked with students from the University of Lancaster and Joe Finney, who is a professor there, to integrate interactive projections into the sea creature experience. And this year, the students created the eyes for the new dragons with LCD panels so that the eyes can move as though they are watching you.
There are 31 people in the factory and we have a very low turnover, but we do recruit and we have two apprenticeships to train the next generation who are working through a general engineering qualification. The days of having an electrical or a mechanical specialist are over and we need multi-skilled people. The industry needs people who can build it, wire it, install it, fix it and program it. And we want people in-house, we don’t want to contract out, so training is key. You might think that this skill set is only useful in Las Vegas, but you'd be wrong!