As the festive season unfolded, the JHAV team got to work across Devon and Cornwall, designing and installing a variety of lighting projects at Dartmoor Zoo for their Zooluminate event, at Lost Gardens of Heligan for part of their Heligan Night Garden event, and at Royal William Yard for their Christmas lighting and Christmas markets.
In our first case study of 2024, we delve behind-the-scenes to showcase the incredible effort, technology, and creativity that came together to make the festive season even more enchanting.
The stats
November kept our warehouse team bustling with activity as they prepared the essential kit, which included:
- 450 lighting fixtures (from leading manufacturers including Ayrton, Chauvet Professional, ADJ and Prolight Concepts).
- 4000m of 16a mains cabling
- 1500m of DMX and data cabling
- 850m of Twinkly LED Fairy lighting
- 2x Chamsys MQ series Desks
- 1200m of festoon
- 100m of Global F34PL Truss
- 200m of scaffolding and framework
Designing Royal William Yard and Dartmoor Zoo Zooluminate
Our team of Project Managers worked closely with the clients to bring their vision to life. Using our in-house design software and site visit photos, sketches and visuals were created to plan locations of the installations and kit, making sure that lighting would be as effective as possible at each location.
John Hibdige, the Project Manager for Dartmoor Zoo and Royal William Yard projects, shared, “At Royal William Yard, we aimed for a more creative approach to lighting installations, treating each area as a separate installation with its own design. By using our new Twinkly LED Fairy Lights stock, NEON Flex, Gobos and uplighters, we crafted a mini light festival experience around the site”.
In addition to the exterior lighting, we also supplied additional indoor lighting and PA system to the Royal William Yard Christmas Markets, which took place inside the Melville Building.
For Dartmoor Zoo, it was the second year we were working on Zooluminate, so our focus was on enhancing the visitor experience, carefully considering visitor flow, popular areas, and animal-friendly lighting colours. Lighting Dartmoor Zoo is an interesting challenge, requiring consideration not only for the visitor experience but also for the animals—choosing colours that don’t disturb them and ensuring minimal disruption to their daily routine”.
Installation – Dartmoor Zoo and Royal William Yard
During December, the team started work on the installations. Royal William Yard Christmas lights were officially turned-on on 3rd December, and the Zooluminate event opened on 8th December, which had a record number of visitors on opening weekend.
John remarked, “As always the weather created some challenges during the installation period in early December, but we worked closely with the site manager to adapt our plans to make sure everything was delivered on time. All of the events were really successful, despite challenging periods of weather.
Our clients gave great feedback on the installations, reporting record numbers of visitors and there was great engagement on social media, with the public sharing pictures of several of the installations, which we feel is always a good gauge of how popular they are!
We had a team on call over the festive period to provide cover for any issues, as well as regular maintenance visits but we had good reliability across the board from our equipment and there were very few problems, which is testament to the quality of the equipment used and our hard-working warehouse team preparing everything before it went to site”.
Heligan and Squid Soup installation – The Wave
In November, the JHAV team were also on site at the Lost Gardens of Heligan, working with the Squid Soup team to deliver the installation of their ‘The Wave’ light artwork.
Our team installed the supporting truss structure, cabling and aided with the install of 500 individual suspended orbs for The Wave installation, a space in which each orb resonates changing harmonies and colours, to create an entrancing physical presence.
We also supplied festoon around the Heligan site, including a selection of LED Pars and flood lights that illuminated trees and foliage. Additionally, we provided 2 Ayrton Cobra Laser Source lights, which projected beams of light across the sky and were visible around the local area.
John said, “It was great to work with Squid Soup again to help facilitate their installation, we’ve previously worked with them on installations at the Illuminate Festival of Light in Plymouth. It’s great to see their audiovisual installations come to life and be engaged with by so many of the public at Heligan.
We regularly work with a number of different light artists to provide technical support to help the installations, and this was a great example of that and how we could use our previous relationship with Squid Soup to help facilitate bringing their installation to Heligan for this year’s event”.
We’re really proud of what the team achieved and it’s evident that the team’s dedication, hard work and imaginative designs breathed life and brought festive sparkle to Zooluminate, Royal William Yard, Heligan Night Garden.
If you’re in search of that extra ‘wow’ factor for your upcoming event, let us bring our expertise and creativity to make your occasion truly magical.
