The £3.5 million 'regeneration by light' scheme, commissioned by Blackpool Council, has been funded by the Northwest Development Agency, the European Regional Development Fund and Blackpool Council. The design concept was developed by Manchester based BDP, the lighting was conceived and programmed by Greg McLenahan of World Wide Lighting Design working in close conjunction with Blackpool's Illuminations department. The installation was overseen and co-ordinated by principal building contractors, J. McCann & Co (Nottingham).
Blackpool has historically been a city of light and illuminations, and this latest ambitious scheme brings a whole new level of contemporary aesthetics and fun to the downtown area of the city. It is designed to encourage people to visit and stay into the evening and take advantage of the many restaurants, bars, cafes, clubs and entertainment venues in this lively area.
The Birley Street lightshow takes place every 10 minutes to a specially composed sound track including a section by the Pet Shop Boys.
They needed bright, high impact lightsources, so McLenahan and the Illuminations department chose Robe's ColorSpot 2500E ATs as the only moving light fixtures of the installation. McLenahan has used Robe for a number of other projects including a giant mirror ball work along the Promenade right on the sea front in 2005 which was one of the original inspirations for this much larger project.
The Robe ColorSpot 2500E ATs - 36 in total - were supplied by Robe UK, where they dealt with Bill Jones.
In Birley Street, there are three ColorSpot 2500E ATs per arch encased in weather domes. These are used for the majority of the effects, throwing dramatic gobo patterns along the street, on the pavement and up the buildings, highlighting the curvature of the other arches and beaming up into the night sky.
Also on the undersides of the arches are LED floods, 200 nodes of CK i-Color Flex and four Bose speakers.
All the street lights have been replaced by 45 lengths of white LED strip made by DW Windsors, who were tasked specifically with building the arches. All the arches are linked with power and data running down the street via three cateneries.
Along Church, Corporation and Clifton Streets are a further 18 Robe ColorSpot 2500E ATs encased in the same domes that are integrated into the top of custom columns.
Lighting control for all four streets is from a central office half way up Birley Street, utilising three ShowCAD Artists systems. Church, Corporation and Clifton Streets are all run via a W-DMX wireless system, and 16 lines of DMX are run through a PathPort DMX manager for Ethernet to DMX conversion. The sound track is stored on a KL3 music server which also plays between-show music.
A Scada intelligent power management system is incorporated into the control set up which allows power to be cut to any fitting on the site, and also controls the conventional street light dimming via photo cell & dali conversion.
For more on this project see page 16 of the December 2009 issue of Lighting&Sound International - available to view free online in the Digital Edition.
(Jim Evans)
