Illuminate festival

Rosa

Dec 12, 20192 min read

Updated: Mar 25, 2020

I've volunteer for the Illuminate Festival in Plymouth.

It's a light festival witch took place from the 28 November to the 1st December 2019.

On the website they said :

"Illuminate is a spectacular light-based festival based in Plymouth that connects all of the Mayflower 400 destinations across the UK and internationally. In 2018 the festival saw the historic Royal William Yard turned into a spectacular display of light-based art installations, interactive displays and projections.

Now in it’s third year, Illuminate will open the Mayflower 400 commemorations in November 2019 during Thanksgiving and close them in November 2020. The project is a signature event in the Mayflower 400 programme and connects the partner destinations across the UK and internationally.

For 2019 audiences are also invited to discover additional installations at the Barbican and Mount Edgcumbe Country Park as well as enjoying a wealth of stunning installations our festival centre, Royal William Yard. Our ambition is to build this event year on year in the lead up to 2020 to become a signature event in Mayflower 400’s programme; and an annual large-scale light festival that will be a highlight in Plymouth’s event calendar."

I had two meetings with them and we decided that I'll be there for the press night on the 26th November, to take pictures before the public be everywhere.

I've volunteer to take pictures for 4 evenings, the 27th, 28th, 29th and the 30th.

I was at Royal William Yard from 4p.m to 9p.m or 10p.m.

I was taking pictures of the installations, the volunteers, the food-trucks, the public, .. And then I had to choose the pictures, work on them and put them on a shared googledrive.

It was a really interesting and enriching experience, to see how an all crew work for an event like this.

I didn't know that events have press bight before the openings. I also learn that it's a team effort and takes a lot of time, not even a few months after the festival they were already thinking about the next one and planning everything.

I've also witnessed all the technical issues that can come up and hard it can be to have enough volunteers and people to fix everything. On the 3 sites, a few installations weren't working at all or partially.

Thanks to this experience I was able to meet artists and talk with them about their installations, what is the life of an artist, the festivals, the work behind every piece, their life, what studies they've done, their next projects, ...

Some of them had their work in places they didn't want but they had to make it work anyway.

Of course, I don't regret the experience and I'm glad I did it because I met so many nice peoples, but I'm not sure if it's something that I would like to do, everything happens so fast and you have to be so quick and it's just not the way I like to work. I like intimacy, quite, taking my time,...

Some of the shoots that I've took: