Luma: let there be light
IN just four years the Luma Southern Light Project has grown exponentially — and the charitable trust behind it has plans to, eventually, make it even bigger.
On Friday night the lights will again be turned on to 29 featured installations in the Queenstown Gardens, where about 45,000 people are expected to visit over four days.
Trust chairman Duncan Forsyth said the growth of the event — visited by 10,000 people in 2016 — was ‘‘outrageous, really’’, but puts it down to Luma’s uniqueness and the community ethos behind it.
The immediate focus for the trust, however, was on strategic planning to ensure Luma was environmentally sustainable — a key aspect of that was developing a waste minimisation framework, policy and strategy, with a goal of becoming ‘‘zero waste’’ by 2020.
Luma had been working with Sustainable Queenstown and the Queenstown Lakes District Council on that and intended to give their plan to the council for use by other noncommercial community events in the district when it was completed.
Along with recyclable plates, a new ‘‘dropoff area’’ on Park Street would also be in play this year to help ease congestion around the gardens.
Luma was also developing a Queenstown Gardens usage plan in conjunction with the Friends of the Gardens.
‘‘We’re now starting to work out a full template for sustainable use of the gardens as well as the waste minimisation, so we’ll be looking at, in conjunction with [Friends of the Gardens], to how we use the gardens, what things we need like grass protection, where we have pathways, all those sorts of things.
‘‘We want to use it, not trash it.’’
Mr Forsyth said Luma’s initial aim was to provide a platform for other artists to exhibit in a unique environment, with the freedom to do whatever they wanted.
‘‘A lot of the light and sculpture festivals, you get asked to submit a piece and then they go ‘where would that piece look good?’ and they put that there.’’
By contrast, all the artists involved with Luma have visited four of five times over the past year and have worked collaboratively on a plan for the gardens, ‘‘brainstorming ideas of what can work where’’, before going away to create pieces.
‘‘Even now we don’t know 100% the installations and the illuminations because we know that everybody is bringing something additional.
‘‘We have so much artistic trust in their credibility. They bring their Agames.’’
A second aim was to bring the community together during a traditionally quieter time of year and ‘‘provide one thread to help the social fabric of the town’’.
‘‘A lot of people struggle and there’s not a lot that’s free around [and] our town’s a classic one — people see each other in the offseasons.
‘‘With not many people around it gives people a chance to go into town, to go out and have a bite to eat . . . have fun with their family . . . in their own town and in their own gardens.’’
While at present the goal was to make Luma better rather than bigger every year, growth is part of the fiveyear plan, Mr Forsyth said.
‘‘We would like to see the whole of June become a Luma month and go down into downtown, around the waterfront, up on the Skyline, Cecil Peak — the world’s your oyster.
‘‘The weekend in the gardens . . . is just the start.’’
Lights will be turned on from 5pm to 10pm from June 1 until June 4, inclusive, and Mr Forsyth encouraged people to come ‘‘lit up’’.
‘‘Make an effort, be part of it. ‘‘Take your time and explore because there are going to be things hidden away and we just want people to have fun.’’