Kaleidoscope Festival of Light: Consulting, Creative Direction & Community Projects

Perth based Mellen Events, specialists in large scale festivals and events, engaged Cindi Drennan and the illuminart team to provide curatorial and design advice, to develop a unique light festival for the City of Joondalup.  Looking to create a distinctive event which stood apart from other light festivals, the team constructed a festival that opened up opportunities for local artists to lead projects based around themes of significance to the community.

Cindi Drennan, Artistic Director at illuminart, stepped into the role of the festival’s creative director for the inaugural festival year, devising several large scale signature projects that brought together Perth production companies to support emerging and well known artists in new installations.

There were over twenty important new projects developed for the festival, along with many existing works supported to be presented. The new projects created especially for the festival included:

• The Lighthouse, a large 3 dimensional structure over 20m wide and 8m high, providing a creative space for dance performance, 3D projection mapping installation and projection art.
• Life Box, a dance and projection performance choreographed by Chrissie Parrot and featuring animation by Stu Nankivell
• Reverse Dreamtime Story, a powerful narrative featuring the rainbow serpent in a future interplanatary creation story
• Gen7, a non linear mobile projection story and performance by Tasty Beacon
• City Ark, an animation about a futuristic city that protects its wildlife and ecology, inspired by the City of Joondalup
• Eidos, an installation by Richard De Souza for the The Stack
• The VR Mechatron, by Frame VR – an immersive ride through the city of the future
• Get Creative, a creative workshop space for all ages incorporating light based activities from LED hula hooping to Glow in the dark face paint
• and many more

During the 18 month process of development, Cindi Drennan worked closely with Mellen events team members and the City of Joondalup to develop key partnerships, promote the festival and flesh out the program. The first year was considered to be a success, not only did the festival attendance exceed expectations on all four nights, the festival itself picked up several significant awards including Best National Event in the national Australian Parks and Leisure awards.

Cindi Drennan handed the curatorial role onward to Drew Anthony 2017-2018, when she again took up the role of Artistic Director of the Port to Port project from 2017-2019.

Photograph Gallery of ‘The Lighthouse’ featuring installations including The Stack, Lifebox, Voxel and The Portal:

Photograph Gallery of activities in Get Creative workshop. This nightly family workshop contained activities for children and families on a theme of illumination: UV jewelry making, UV face painting, shadow puppet making and performance, hula hooping, juggling performances, making art with recycled materials.