Culture Creative’s designers get to work with GLP’s versatile washlight

The UK’s popular Christmas Light Trails, which have increasingly gained currency since COVID, create an almost magical and magnetic visitor experience. This winter, they have provided a perfect opportunity for GLP’s Creos washlight to make its debut at two National Trust country estates—Wimpole Hall in Cambridgeshire and Stourhead House, a Palladian style villa in Wiltshire.

Both form part of a large portfolio of outdoor events for Culture Creative, who specialise in delivering light art experiences—everything from fire gardens to Halloween events and outdoor visitor experiences. These two trails, covering around 2km each, were produced in partnership with promoters, Sony Music.

Culture Creative’s head of lighting (and senior designer), Tony Simpson, used five Creos at Stourhead while accomplished freelance LD, Adam King, took a different approach at Wimpole where four were deployed as eye candy on the steps of the stately home.

Creos leverages the strengths of GLP’s powerful new X5 platform, offering an advanced colour gamut and unrivalled versatility. Equipped with 18 x 40W RGBL LEDs, arranged in three rows of six pixels each, it offers breathtaking output, with a motorised 1:12 zoom and seamless 190° tilt.

Creos’ IP65 rating further makes it a compelling choice for large scale temporary visitor experiences such as this, which Culture Creative also mastermind in the US and Australia.

Tony Simpson could immediately see the fixture’s many advantages. “Having a product like Creos was brilliant, especially being the first in the UK to use it. Its IP65 rating, smooth movement and the fact you can run it in individual pixel mode enables a designer to do a lot of clever things.” For these deployments all were programmed in Mode 5 DMX Multipix Advanced.

Both designers used Creos predominantly as eye candy to arrest the attention of visitors. Said King, “I jumped at the opportunity to use Creos knowing it was an IP-rated unit that would deliver nice eye candy and washes and create a ‘stop and stare’ moment.

“We try and change things each year, as there are a lot of repeat audiences; so this year we did a big time-coded show to music at the house which is where we used Creos. Four units were placed on the steps of the hall, time-coded to a Loki remix of the orchestral Carol of the Bells.

“I did a lot of swooping out with colour from the centre of the building and Creos gave us some real points to hit, colour bumps etc. They are so present—highly effective, and sufficiently punchy to enable tight beam work, pointing them up in the sky. I had four hazers to accentuate the beams, and on one night it was naturally foggy, which was incredible … the effect was just brilliant.

“Creos’ versatility gives you the best of all worlds; I could wash the building, tilt them towards the audience to produce little twinkles or put them up to the sky—great eye candy, and we didn’t have a single failure. For events and outdoor work, they are perfect.

Over at Stourhead Tony Simpson was designing his fifth consecutive show. However, an accredited ‘Dark Skies Reserve’ site any light emanating above a horizontal plane is prohibited. But this didn’t stop the designer, who got to work with an inspired approach at the end of the trail where a gateway with turrets marks the entrance to the main drive.

The Creos were used as eye candy at the top of the battlements, synced to a pop-based soundtrack. “Having an IP-rated unit that can change colour and be programmed into different modes is phenomenal. They were very effective in delivering a lot of twinkly eye candy effects and were lovely to work with, producing a highly effective walkout piece,” he said.

Lighting inventory for these events was provided by White Light and IPS.

Stourhead photo: Credit James Sharples

About Culture Creative

Culture Creative is a creative project and production management company based in the UK. The Company works across a wide range of cultural fields including art, sport, heritage, tourism, festivals and events, developing projects from concept to delivery. Since 2004 Culture Creative has been creating 5 star light art experiences in some of the most environmentally sensitive heritage and landscape settings in the world. Today the company works regularly in Botanic Gardens in Australia, USA, and the UK and more recently it has created light trails in Europe and the Middle East.

www.culturecreative.co.uk | FB @culturecreativeltd | Twitter @CCLCreative | Instagram @culturecreativeltd