Every year, the National Trust decorate their estate with imaginative and creative Christmas displays including light art installations. Buckland Abbey planned a “Christmas River” experience highlighting the natural surroundings within the abbey grounds.

The Brief

Buckland Abbey had a vision. An elegant, enchanting Christmas experience in their great barn. The trust asked us to design concepts and present options for the delivery of their Christmas plans. We were asked to expand on the themes of water, fish and the magic of Christmas to deliver a high quality lighting installation.

This installation needed to be designed to be self-managing, operator free and completely repeatable throughout the Christmas season.

The Solution

Nub presented numerous options for the river of light at a range of budgets. Once the final configuration had been agreed upon and refined, Nub set about planning and preparing the installation. All equipment was prepared, pre-addressed and tested before going to site along with pre-looming of cabling to reduce time on-site. The entire installation was in-place and programmed within 10 hours on-site keeping disruption to a minimum.

Nub utilised a Chamsys MagicQ console for the timecoded playback of the 2 hour rotating light show which plays throughout the day. Overall, the light show was live for over 400 hours without the need for on-site support or down-time.