The directors at Derby City Council had a clear brief, celebrate a sense of place, while contributing to their multiple year vision for the regeneration of the city centre. Through budget cuts, the Christmas scheme and supplementary events had been cut down. Culminating in the limited budget for a real tree, that wasn’t well received. The directors saw this as an opportunity to reinvest in state of the art features to bring the sense of community and sense of place back to the city centre.
Through initial consultations, a clear vision was already cemented for the client. They had plans in place to acknowledge and celebrate the past through the world renowned local painter Joseph Wright. 2019 approach was to focus on the present, with tentative plans in place to celebrate Derby’s growth into the future. Our initial consultations importantly including considering the space for the feature and various different concepts were discussed. Acknowledging a relatively tight deadline and budget for the scale and ambition of the project, we felt using a stock product augmented with our industry leading technology would be an ideal route to progress.
The final concept of using four walkthrough present parcels to create themed, personal spaces for the public to enjoy. Elements would provide the visual backdrop, with fire, water, earth and ice not only providing a coherent theme, but also enabling different light qualities for the public to enjoy as they move through each feature, promoting dwell time for the combined feature. The clients vision wanted to create a truly unique attraction to drive footfall and promote Derby on social media platforms. We supplemented these themed elemental designs, delivering a concept to create two bespoke light and sound shows that would play on an agreed schedule. The client provided the songs and our team created dazzling lights shows in sync with this music content. With this level of technology, planning is critical, our dedicated project manager team took the lead ,working with the clients support team over many site surveys to make sure all points were considered and our plan of delivery was agreed. Through the three day installation and 4 days to commission the feature, the project kept to time and b budget. The switch on was a great success, with client commenting “This is like Disney has been brought to Derby”. We love bringing innovative concepts to life and our care and passion comes to the forefront with such a technically advanced delivery.
