Lightworks – Where the Magic is Made!

Take a look inside “Lightworks”. The Blackpool Illuminations Depot where all the magic is made! It’s an unassuming grey unit on an industrial estate in South Blackpool near to the airport runway.

It’s not open for public visits. However, you can book onto a scheduled Heritage Tour of Lightworks to take a look around this amazing building. But not during coronavirus restrictions, of course!

Unremarkable it might be from the outside, but magic happens inside. It’s where manufacture and maintenance of all of the Blackpool Illuminations takes place.

This short video starring Lightworks Manager Richard Williams, takes you inside the Illuminations and Lightworks Depot. Narration by Andrew Walker, directed and produced by Stuart Braithwaite.

The Lightworks Depot

There’s no such thing as an ‘Illuminations Shop’ where you can go to buy things off a shelf!

Each individual Blackpool Illumination is dreamed up, planned out and made at Lightworks. It’s all because of the team of skilled and imaginative craftsmen and engineers.

The original Illuminations depot was at Rigby Road. Everything moved to the new Lightworks depot when the old building became no longer fit for purpose.

Lightworks is a modern building – and it’s specially designed to accommodate the strange shapes and huge sizes of the illuminations. Taking two years to design and build, it opened in 2010.

For example, the shutter doors are especially high so that lorries can drive straight into the building for loading and unloading. That’s so that the massive tableaux and displays can be moved about, out of the wind and rain.

And the floor space is laid out in sections to organise a logical workflow. The Illuminations move sensibly around the factory as they progress through different stages of manufacture or repair. They’re too big to move about unnecessarily!

Look inside Lightworks…

This is a Blackpool Illuminations/Blackpool Council video of Lightworks, originally uploaded to their ‘Blackpool Illuminations’ Facebook page on 6.6.20 to celebrate the depots 10th year. Narrated by Blackpool Illuminations creative curator, Laurence Llewelyn Bowen.

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Working at Lightworks – A Unique Job

It’s a bit of a dream job isn’t it! To be able to say to people ‘I make and install Blackpool Illuminations for a living’!

So how do people come to work at Lightworks?

People typically join the Illuminations team with a trade. So you might start work here as an electrician or welder. Then learning how to adapt traditional skills to suit the very unique requirements of the job.

Imagine this being your career – what a story to tell your grandchildren!

The construction team has a broad range of skills between them and can turn their hand to anything. They work in steel, fibreglass, plastic, timber, fibre optics, lasers, LEDs… and many other forms of lighting.

Their skills all come together in the joinery, fitting and fibreglass shops under the guidance of foremen and engineers to create the finished product.

No two days are the same for the staff on the shop floor, the managers or administration staff. The people who build the lights are the same ones who go out on the promenade to put them up. Everyone in the team is very hands on and can do many different jobs.

How do they do all that at Lightworks?

Have you ever wondered how new Illuminations get from the spark of an idea to the streets of Blackpool Promenade?

Within the team are people with skills in design, costing, manufacture, building and display. They’ve got all the skills to take a display from an idea to illumination.

Design Stage

It all starts with a design brief. The team first work out how to make an interesting display that people will enjoy. The cost to manufacture and install, and the robustness of the piece are both important factors.

It’s always vital to consider the weather because not only do they have to look good but they must be structurally sound. They’re all strong enough to withstand the weather, which can be atrocious!

Whatever the weather

There’s a lot more to planning for the West Coast wind than you might imagine. Each display must be within a maximum size for windage. The weight has to be within tolerance. Each one has a lifting plan.

The Blackpool Illuminations team are experts at adapting indoor equipment to work outside in all weathers, often done by developing special housings. For example, the projector equipment in the Brilliance installation on Birley Street and within the Illuminations display on the promenade.

Designs were hand drawn in the old days, by experienced technical draftsmen. Today they’re computer generated, with computer aided design (CAD) software. It’s the biggest recent change in the process.

CAD accurately calculates strengths and tolerances and performs an analysis of the build design and cost.

Getting Creative at Lightworks

The finished design can now come to life. Manufacture transforms it from a two dimensional, flat plan into three dimensions!

They’re made using fibreglass, steel and wood.

A mould is made if more than one feature is needed. For example in the over-road sections. The craftsmen will carve it in polystyrene, then wrapping the polystyrene in fibreglass to make the mould pieces.

Multiple copies of the same shape can be formed in the hand-made mould. Then individually spray painted to create the finished effect of a rainbow of colours. It’s how the overhead road sections are made. Like these, below –

Making the Lights Work

Ever wondered how the Blackpool Illuminations are controlled? How they come on and go off every day?

Each daily switch on is controlled with modern technology and seven substations, all linked together along the route.

All the big tableaux have their wiring and controls the the back of the display.

Did you know? The Blackpool Illuminations run on 24 volts? Different voltage levels have been tried but this is the perfect one.

But you’ve probably never seen a 24v light bulb available anywhere to buy! So specially made Illuminations lamps are specially imported, just for this job. And, for safety, they’re made of plastic. So they do in fact bounce!

And don’t forget! They’re called ‘lamps’ not ‘bulbs’ because they grow underground!

All these developments and refinements over the years enable the Blackpool Illuminations to achieve a 98% lit rate at any one time.

Coming Home to Lightworks for Winter

Each winter, about half of the Illuminations come into the Lightworks depot by rotation. The features withstand an awful lot of harsh weather, hung outside in the elements.

On their return to Lightworks, the grime and salt is first cleaned off with a good pressure washing. Electricians check and service the wiring and any necessary repairs made. Paintwork might be touched up or it could get a full respray. Finally, the spruced up display languishes in it’s storage bay until the team is ready to reinstall it.

Each one has a service history and a full paper trail.

Dismantling them for winter also creates the opportunity to update and refresh the display. And it protects them from some of the wind damage on the rough winter seafront.

Each spring the whole season starts again, and the process of installing them begins from about April.

Obviously they all HAVE to be in place by the end of August for Switch On!

An Amazing Sight!

Lightworks depot is an amazing place and the first time you go into this vast shed it just makes your jaw drop!

The familiar features just look so different! Whether arranged in their racks or stood on the floor, it’s amazing just how different they do seem. They also look so much bigger inside than they do out on the Prom in the dark night air.

The best time to see inside Lightworks depot is in Spring, while everything is in storage, before refitting for the season has begun.

Have a look around our website to see some of their wonderful creations. But nothing beats a stroll along Blackpool promenade on an autumn night, gazing up at all the miles of twinkly lights!

While you’re here…

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