Lights in Alingsås to shine in Portugal

For almost twenty years, the world has come to Lights in Alingsås in Sweden. Now it’s time for this Swedish lighting event itself to go on the road. A team from Jönköping University, under the leadership of lighting designer Laura Bernadet, has been invited to run a Lights workshop during one of Portugal’s biggest street-art festivals.
“There is more interest in the Lights i Alingsås festival than ever,” says project leader Angelica Larsson.

This year’s lighting designers come from all over the world – as do the students. And some of the 80,000 visitors to the Nordic countries’ biggest lighting event also come from abroad. But during the event’s 20-year history a Lights in Alingsås workshop has never left town – until now.

This year, from 22 to 26 May, Laura Bernadet and her students from Jönköping University are holding a workshop as part of one of Portugal’s biggest street-art festivals, at Santa Maria da Feira, a town just outside Porto.

“This will be a new experience for us – but a very interesting one,” says project leader Angelica Larsson, who together with colleague Anna Grill will also give talks on the theme of light and lighting during the week.

The explanation for these developments is that representatives from Santa Maria da Feira visited the festival in Alingsås, and loved it.

“So, they got in touch and invited us to Portugal. And as their project is a part of a project financed by the EU we had nothing to lose,” says Angelica Larsson.

The final part of the plan fell into place when one of the schools associated with Lights in Alingsås, Jönköping University, managed to put together a team of both new and more experienced students under the leadership of lighting designer and teacher, Laura Bernadet.

Immediately after a recent Skype meeting between Portuguese participants and their counterparts on the Swedish student team - Eric Karlsson, Viktor Martinsson, Tina Wikström and Vera Kokko - Laura Bernadet explained the plan. 

“We’re going to create something we call, Screen of Reality. The idea is that we fill the town square with a lighting event in which the visitors themselves are involved in creating the content,” says Laura.

Rogier Hengeveld, representative of the Dutch company InventDesign, one of the largest sponsors of Lights in Alingsås, is someone who believes wholeheartedly in the festival going on tour. He is also convinced that this can be something to invest in in the future.

“We want to invest in future talent, which is something we particularly like about Lights in Alingsås. In it students get to work with the best people in lighting, and apart from that they get a whole town to work on and light up,” he adds and continues:

“When it comes to Portugal in particular, we’re happy to see lighting receiving more attention and publicity. We also know that Lights in Alingsås is an organization which we can trust to do a good job as an ambassador for lighting design.”

Contact:
Angelica Larsson, project leader
angelica.larsson@estradalingsas.se
+46 322 64 48 52