Floriade NightFest

Since 2010, Mandylights has worked with government client EventsACT to design and deliver spectacular lighting treatments over a 25 acre site in Canberra – Australia’s capital city. Over a million bulbs are planted annually for what is the southern hemisphere’s largest flower festival, with the event staged over a month each year in early Spring. For four nights, the park comes alive at night with brilliant illuminations, live music and performances across the site as NightFest transforms the entire site into an electric wonderland.

The event takes on a new theme and layout each year, allowing for NightFest lighting to similarly evolve and reinvent the space annually. With over a decade of experience on site, Mandylights teams have explored lighting in trees, lakes, ponds and almost every possible building to create a sense of discovery every year for the tens of thousands of visitors who attend.

Mandylights redefined NightFest’s lighting with the introduction of spectacular light artworks that are purpose-built for the site. Over the years, we’ve developed installations for the various lakes and ponds and in various hidden groves of trees. Always respectful of the surrounding environment, the installations use light and sound to create magical, immersive environments that all offer a new take on the show’s floral theme.

Many of our internationally touring artworks actually began their life at NightFest – our iconic Cathedral of Light, for example – featured at NightFest in 2015 for the first time before going on to be seen by millions of guests around the world.

Mandylights’ long term relationship with NightFest has allowed us to invest over a million dollars in event-specific, flexible production infrastructure that comes about with the assistance of long-term contracts and future-focused clients who are always keen to better their event operations.

Our first years of NightFest featured lighting installed in clad scaffolding towers – a practical but less than elegant solution for getting a thousand lights off the ground around the site. Working closely with our clients and stakeholders, we designed and proposed an entirely bespoke tower system – the mArc system – that could replace unsightly scaff towers with more sculptural arched truss towers that would blend into the site a little better. Mandylights fabricated over thirty truss towers for use around the site and they’ve become a staple of our outdoor production infrastructure over the last decade. As designers, we’ve always hated traditional chrome off-the-shelf truss solutions, so our matte black, purpose-built towers are designed to offer the most creative rigging solutions while keeping the lowest possible visual profile.

On top of our truss towers (quite literally) sit hundreds of similarly purpose-made lighting fixtures, including bespoke LED flood systems designed and built by Mandylights.

We’re also proud to be Australia’s only lighting supplier working entirely on European-standard CeeForm power systems which provide better waterproofing and international compatibility.

One of our longest-standing projects, Floriade NightFest represents the very best of what Mandylights offers – complete, in-house creative design and delivery, bespoke production overlay developed in consultation with our clients and stakeholders, and an ongoing project that receives fresh, original and world-class creative treatments each year.

Our approach to site lighting is transformational, creative and enthusiastic – our year-after-year development and commitment to fresh creative is applied across acres of flowers, walking trails and parklands and crowds still flock to the event to discover what visual treats lie waiting each year.