What do Laurence Llewellyn-Bowen, Keith Lemon and Blackpool Sixth Form students all have in common? They’ve all designed new illuminations for the 2024 season.
The brand new installations have been manufactures at Blackpool’s Lightworks factory and were unveiled for a preview ahead of the switch on at the end of August. The eclectic bunch of designers behind them have created disco donkeys, dippy dinosaurs and aliens while the Lightworks team has designed a larger than life Buzz Wire arcade game.
The students were selected by Llewelyn-Bowen in his role of creative curator of the Illuminations. Nine students were chosen – eight of whom are in Lower Sixth – to design a new overhead roadway section that pays homage to the Aliens feature that graced the Illuminations display several years ago. The new display includes 10 individual illustrations of Alien life.
Laura Goodinson, assistant head of visual arts at Blackpool Sixth, said: “It was such an honour to have been considered to create art work for the Illuminations team.
“The BTEC art and design students are thrilled to have had the opportunity to get involved in a prestigious project like this one and are extremely excited to see the future developments. Live brief projects like this help mould and shape our young people into innovative and confident individuals.”
As a kid I loved the Blackpool lights so the design I did features things that lit up my world as a child – space, dinosaurs and the idea of flight.
Llewellyn-Bowen’s new piece is called Disco Donkey Cavalcade – a celebration of one of Blackpool’s beach attractions, with 12 donkeys dressed in ’70s-inspired swimwear parading on a 16ft high platform, beneath a giant ice cream topped with a disco ball.
“What says Blackpool better than donkeys,” Llewellyn-Bowen said. “I have created a celebratory monument to the iconic quadrupeds who have been heroically carrying millions of happy holidaymaking bottoms for over a century and a half.
“My Disco Donkey Cavalcade is conceived as a light-hearted and warm-hearted homage to Blackpool’s super specialness.”
Leigh Francis (aka TV star Keith Lemon), meanwhile, has A brand new tableau featuring a wildly imaginative and colourful design incorporating a 12ft tall dinosaur, space ship, astronaut, an airborne BMX bike, and Francis himself flying through the skies towards The Blackpool Tower. The tableau, which is the second to be created for the Light Around The World section at the northern end of the display, is based on Francis’s childhood memories.
He said: “As a kid I loved the Blackpool lights so the design I did features things that lit up my world as a child – space, dinosaurs and the idea of flight. Hence the figure on the flying BMX and myself flying barefoot, feeling the wind through my toes as I take flight to the Blackpool Tower.”
The Lightworks team’s new tableaux will be proudly displayed at the Tower Headland. A larger-than-life Buzz Wire arcade game, visitors will be able to test their skill and nerve on a specially designed installation reflecting Blackpool’s famous skyline.
The Chandelier Causeway roadway section has also been reimagined for 2024 and features strobe lighting while all three of the replica Spitfires on Gynn Roundabout will display special markings as a tribute to the 80th anniversary of the D-day landings.
Speaking at the preview event, Cllr Lynn Williams, Leader of Blackpool Council, said: “This year we have given our designers an opportunity to let their imaginations run wild – and that is illustrated in these amazing new installations.
“They bring to this year’s display a real sense of fun and humour. Where else on earth, for example, would you see 12 donkeys wearing Seventies-style retro bathing costumes and parading beneath a giant disco ball?
“We are hugely grateful for the creative genius that has been brought to the table by both Laurence and Leigh Francis, by the brilliant students from Blackpool Sixth and by our amazing team at Lightworks.”
The Illuminations display is one of the biggest and longest-running light-based festivals in the world. It started in 1879 with just a handful of carbon arc lamps creating what was described at the time as “artificial sunshine”. It now extends the entire six miles of Promenade with more than a million LED lights.
Post-COVID the display was extended by two months and now runs from August until January, attracting six million visitors to the resort during the autumn and winter months.
This year’s Switch On is at the Tower Headland on 30 August. Full details of the line-up and the person who will pull the famous switch will be revealed over the coming weeks.
Find out what else is happening this summer in our listings.
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