Central Hosts the 2020 New Technologies Showcase
On Friday 24 January, Central opened the doors to its Embassy Theatre to host guests and industry partners for the 2020 New Technologies Showcase. The annual event is run by the Association of Lighting Designers together with White Light Ltd and provides top industry professionals with an opportunity to explore and compare the latest lighting technology available on the market.
Central has been pleased to host the showcase for the past several years, particularly as it provides 2nd Year Lighting Design and Production Lighting students with the opportunity to design, plan, rig and programme the event alongside their course tutors and professional event staff from White Light. This unique learning experience allows Central’s students to work on a high profile, public facing event alongside some of the industry’s leading professionals.
This year, in addition to the professional showcase in the Embassy Theatre, Central’s students presented a special outdoor element: a video mapping project called ‘Behind These Walls’, which was supported by Industry partners Green Hippo and Universal Pixels alongside professional video designer Louise Rhodes Brown, was mapped onto the exterior walls of the School’s Webber Douglas Studio, New Studio and Workshops. All video content for the project was created by 2nd year Lighting Design students with production roles and media server programming duties undertaken by the School’s new 1st year Production Lighting students.
Nick Moran, Central’s Course Leader for the Lighting Design and Production Lighting courses as well as an elected director, board member and education representative for the Association of Lighting Designers said of the showcase event:
“These two projects (the New Technology Showcase and the Video Mapping project) are good examples of what we mean by industry facing for the lighting courses here and for all the courses in the Theatre Practice programme. We find that students and industry partners get a huge amount from these kinds of collaboration, in terms of new knowledge and understanding for the students and building relationships with the next generation of specialists and clients for the companies.”
You can find out more about Central’s Lighting Design and Production Lighting Courses by visiting their respective course pages; you can also learn more about the work of a professional lighting designer by reading Nick Moran’s piece ‘What is a Lighting Designer?’ here.
