Client: Ladysmith Festival of Lights
Ladysmith is a small town located on Vancouver Island and is home to the Ladysmith Festival of Lights, which was started in 1987 by a man named Bill Fitzpatrick. To receive approval for the Festival, Fitzpatrick pushed the commercial benefits of a Christmas festival, stating that it would: (1) put Ladysmith on the map; (2) increase the number of visitors; and (3) encourage residents to shop locally, thus reinvigorating Ladysmith’s economy in the wintertime.
And so, the first Festival of Lights was born! The inaugural festival received 500 attendees, which has now increased to upwards of 25,000 annually. People come along from all over the West Coast to experience the magic. 2017 marked the 30th Anniversary of the Ladysmith Festival of Lights.
Project Outline: Festival Lighting Plan
We began working with the Ladysmith Festival of Lights in 2015. Our intention was to help them to transition from using incandescent lights to using commercial grade LED lights.
Their two main concerns with the incandescent lighting that they’d been using since the beginning were:
1. lack of durability.
2. power consumption.
Hundreds of glass bulbs were broken each year during installation and removal, and the electricity bill at the end of each Christmas season was thousands of dollars.