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Between 25th and 30th April, six landmark buildings around the UK were given a spectacular colour makeover courtesy of White Light and Crown Paints to mark Crown Colour Week - a nationwide celebration of colour. In each of the six cities - Bristol, Birmingham, Cardiff, Manchester, Newcastle and Glasgow - residents were asked to vote for their favourite colour via a survey in a local paper. The winning colour was then used to light a much-loved landmark, orchestrated by a White Light team led by production manager Simon Jones. "We were approached by icas PR at the beginning of the year," Jones explains. "They'd had the idea of giving buildings a colour makeover but needed advice on how this could be brought to life and what equipment would be needed. Our role included deciding which buildings could be lit to best effect in the time available and then liasing with local councils and building management to make sure they were happy to be part of the project. "The buildings finally chosen were Bristol Cathedral, St Martin's Church in Birmingham, Cardiff Town Hall, the Urbis in Manchester, the Theatre Royal Newcastle and Glasgow University. Once they were chosen, we ensured that we had the correct permissions to access the buildings before carrying out site visits and colour tests at each location." Because the results of the local surveys wouldn't be known until the week before the lighting had to be implemented, Jones had to specify a rig flexible enough to light all of the chosen buildings in any colour. The touring lighting rig included twenty StudioDue CityColor colour-changing floodlights and seven Mac2000 moving spotlights as well as sixty Source Four Pars, and four Philips ArenaVisions. The touring rig also included over 3.5km of mains and control cable as well as 30m of cable ramp and 50m of safety fencing. The week itself was treated like a quick-moving rock and roll tour - months of careful planning and preparation followed by a week in which the show carried all of the equipment and staff it needed as it travelled 1800 miles around the country in six days. "We knew that on each day we'd have just six hours to set up the lighting then just 30 minutes to program and focus," Jones explains. "To help us achieve that, as much preparation work as possible was carried out in advance - arranging to park generators, a crew bus and an equipment lorry in confined, busy city centres; getting permission from city councils; getting safe access to the roofs of old buildings; carrying out all of the health-and-safety paperwork for each venue, one of which was a grade 1 listed building; getting positions for the equipment - even arranging to get street lights and building lights turned off." The week itself then involved Simon Jones and a team of six lighting electricians (Ben Cash, Steve Sherriff, Duncan Holmes, Richard Gorr and Mark Newel), two generator technicians from Powerline, a tour bus driver from Len Wright and a truck driver from Paul Matthews Transport. Helen Lawson and Helen Mitchem from icas PR were also at the site each day to monitor progress and liase with the local media. The lighting was successfully achieved on time in each city, the chosen colours seeing the Theatre Royal Newcastle and Glasgow University turned blue, Cardiff Town Hall, yellow, the Urbis in Manchester, purple, and St Martin's Church in Birmingham and Bristol Cathedral shades of pink and purple. Each building was lit for around six hours after sunset before the White Light team packed up the equipment and moved on to the next city. icas PR then issued pictures of the building to the local media. Roszina Ali, Communications Manager at Crown Paints, was impressed by the effect the lighting created. "As the first ever Crown Colour Week, we needed the lighting to be spectacular and have real impact for both passers-by and the local media. The fact that the six buildings had to be lit one after another added another significant challenge. However, the end result looked stunning and White Light did a great job of bringing Crown's message of colour to life during Crown Colour Week." Crown Colour Week is just one of the many building lighting projects White Light has been involved with, having also lit landmarks such as the BA London Eye, King's College, the Imperial War Museum, the British Museum and Painshill Park, the lighting for which was the subject of a feature in Country Life magazine. White Light can oversee every aspect of a building or even lighting from initial concept to design, equipment supply, health-and-safety paperwork, crewing and logistics. Further information about the full range of services White Light offer can be found elsewhere on this website, or by calling 020 8254 4800. Photographs, top-bottom:
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