136 TECHNOLOGY / LED CASE STUDY
Ryan, the Illuminations Manager, when asked about his flamboyant job title, which he readily admits involves a bit of everything. The yearly £2 million pound budget which is allotted to the Illuminations pales in comparison to the amounts spent on the light displays that glitter along the Las Vegas Strip or on the Atlantic City boardwalk, so Ryan often has to constrain his creative vision and his infectious verve for his work. Nevertheless he has achieved his fair share of illuminated showstoppers, one of his personal favourites being ‘Fire and Water’, an innovative mix of music, light and water. The 34 man operation which puts together the yearly Blackpool spectacular are a council department, based in an old warehouse and funded primarily by the local authority, supported in part by sponsorship and public donations. “When other seaside resorts close for the winter we’re still open, we are busy while other places just give up for the winter, that is an important aspect,” Ryan says. It is estimated that all the hard work and money spent to put on the Illuminations causes a yearly injection of 250 million pounds into the local economy, at a time of year when ordinarily seaside businesses are either closed or struggling. Ryan has overseen the introduction of many LED based designs into the Illuminations
during his 23 year stint on the team and he considers LED technology a lot more enabling than the old filament style lights from years past. “It allows you many more colour changes,” he says, “and the program systems are amazing, they use less electricity and the LED units themselves are dropping in price.” LEDs were first used in the Blackpool Illuminations back in 1995, one of the first times that the new technology was used in a prominent light display. Featuring in a tableaux called ‘Fright Lights’ the LEDs were used to create a host of goblins and witches in the style of an old fashioned fairground house of horror. The results were impressive for the time, but Ryan concedes that the LED technology was limited and in its infancy then and has improved greatly in the succeeding years.
The Illuminations themselves are predominantly Chinese made given the lack of manufacturers in the UK which can work to Blackpool’s specifications. “There are some good LED manufacturers in the UK,” says Ryan, “but they don’t really make any products for us.” A one to one relationship exists between the Blackpool team and their Chinese counterparts, the design and its end result passing between the two without the need for middlemen. “There can be
The Illuminations through the years including (left) the pylons designed by Jo Berry and (bottom middle) a display from 1952 celebrating Blackpool’s victory in the 1953 FA Cup final.
problems with Chinese manufacturers, or any manufacturer,” Ryan adds, “but we’ve done our best to improve the quality of what we have.”
New LED features for 2012 included the production of some large multi-coloured crowns, timely in a year which has seen its fair share of royal celebration. The Blackpool crowns were orginally used on the Wellington Arch, just around the corner from Buckingham Palace, before they were returned to the North to take their place in this year’s display.
Another new LED project was designed by the Derbyshire based artist Jo Berry, the project marks a sea change in the way projects for the Illuminations have been designed in the past, with local artists now being called on to provide light installations for the annual light show. Berry designed five fibre-glass pylons for the display, based upon some similar fluted pylons that were made for the 1938 Illuminations. The thirties versions were made from Plaster of Paris and lit in white from the top. Berry was particularly inspired by the old design books she used for research, volumes of
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