A chance meeting with Jonathan David, secretary of the Society of Light and Lighting, at ARC back in February unwittingly led me down memory lane to Ready-Steady-Light, held at Rose Bruford College, surrounded by the ghosts of college past as an ex-Bruford myself.
Turn a corner and you could step back a decade by mistake, to when RBC was incubating its first fully-fledged lighting design graduates (myself included), the first batch in Europe nonetheless. In parts, the college is literally untouched, but new developments include the smart glass-fronted lobby, linking the ancient work-horse 'Barn Theatre' (faithfully serving many a Bruford over the years), with new teaching rooms and designs suites. In-the-round venue 'The Rose' offers a sophisticated contemporary atmosphere with outside upper terrace and court-yard, surrounded by new rehearsal spaces. Gone are early mornings spent loitering in a dreary Deptford car-park, with the savoury stench of the nearby pet-food factory. Creek Road, the other former college site, might have made way for luxury flats, but it is certainly for the better of the students enjoying the idyll that this college now offers. But back to the matter in-hand.
In a nut-shell - 15 teams of roughly six members each are allocated a site on the college grounds, pulled from a hat. Each site has also been allocated a certain amount of architectural lighting equipment. The teams then have around three hours to install a lighting scheme according to a theme until judging commences.
Each site has 3kW of power already installed, terminated in 6 x 16A, a stock of cable and ray-guns/grelcos etc. Each team is allocated a second-year student to act as a 'runner'. A swap-shop operates in the lighting classroom, where teams can trade kit in exchange for different items from the small equipment 'pool', or something that someone else has traded in.
This year's event was attended by architects, consultants, professionals, and students from RBC, Central School of Speech and Drama, and the Bartlett school of architecture.
This year's theme was 'The Elements - Earth, Wind, Fire and Water', and three prizes were awarded. The SLL prize for technical performance saw the judges looking for technical implementation, equipment integration, energy consumption, and light pollution. The ELDA/IALD prize for artistic interpretation focuses on the interpretation of the theme. And thirdly, the Peer Prize is decided by all participants and visitors, who vote for their favourite installation.
Over the years, Nick Hunt, Rose Bruford's production programme coordinator and lecturer in lighting design, has integrated the event into the lighting design degree, maximising on opportunities for student involvement. Third-year Kate Parker was acting as the student event manager as part of her course-work, liaising between organisations about power etc. Other students had timed their projects to coincide, with one team offering a 30-minute performance piece of outdoor lighting and water fountains, programmed to music, down by the lake. Hunt says: "The students aren't familiar with the architectural kit but they get to learn about it with the professionals, and then do a project in class; but it plays both ways." Ben Ratcliffe, the lighting design programme director, agrees that the professionals benefit too from this interwoven relationship. He says: "The professionals are often really excited to be able to 'play' and experiment without consequences."
Early on in t
