8/18/2023 0 Comments Blackpool illuminations dates 2021![]() ![]() We’ve got a big factory close to Blackpool Airport. I didn’t quite believe it, so I had to drive down and have a look – and they had.”įor Mr Williams, the everyday maintenance is as much a part of the job as the conceptualising and design. And after some investigation, it turned out that someone had tried to illegally tap-off his hotel, but he’d gone for a 6,000-volt cable. “We lost power to all of South Shore a couple of years ago, a really large area. ![]() “I’ve been out Christmas Eve on a cherry picker, fixing a snapped wire,” he says. And while Mr Williams might be in charge of the whole operation, that doesn’t mean he won’t be called out into the cold on a winter night if anything goes wrong. And in 2021 they’ll stay on for an extra two months for the second year in a row, as Blackpool tries to recover some of the business it lost to Covid-19. It’s like the opening night of the theatre – we have to be ready.”īut once the lights are on, the work doesn’t stop. ![]() “All the work goes into that one day,” he says. The day of the Illuminations’ big switch-on is always the high point of Williams’ year and the culmination of months of planning. It was known as ‘Illuminations weather’.” “Years ago, big sections of the lights on the promenade would go out in bad weather, with the wind and the spray from the sea. Voltages have decreased too, which has increased reliability. For years we always wanted to have neon in the display, but because of the high voltage, it wasn’t reliable enough.” “We’ve got a lot more LED technology and have even got lighting that looks like neon even though it’s LED. “When I started working, the sheds were quite cold, so you’d turn the light features on to get warm – but nowadays that wouldn’t work,” says Mr Williams. Last year’s display used 960,000 units, at an approximate cost of £50,000 – a third of what it was 10 years ago. Although there are now more lights than ever in the display, the electricity bill is shrinking due to improvements in technology (Photograph: Martin Bostock Photography)Īlthough there are now more lights than ever in the display – not just the more than one million bulbs, but also more than 100 miles of festoon strung between the promenade poles and across the carriageway – the electricity bill is shrinking, due to improvements in technology. For the past seven years, he has been Illuminations manager, overseeing the 24 people who work on the lights year-round. With that expertise, Mr Williams became production manager, bringing in the manufacturers and new features. “I introduced a lot of new technology to the display to enhance what we had,” he says. He needn’t have worried and was able to put his skills to good use on the Illuminations. I thought, ‘Well, you know you might not always get a job as an engineer, but you’ll certainly get a job as an electrician.’” He also did an extra night a week at college “to qualify as your bog standard electrician. He signed up for an electronics course at Blackpool College, and spent the next four years “badgering his boss, asking to do some training”. I want to do more than just put things up for the rest of my life.’” “I remember thinking one day, ‘I want more than this. This year’s Blackpool Illuminations (Photograph: Sean Conboy/Photogenics) ![]() He then started working for Blackpool Council on street lighting, before transferring to the operations side of the illuminations when the streetlights contract was tendered out to another company. He was born in Blackpool and began putting up decorative lights on shopfront signs after leaving school. “We develop and manufacture them ourselves, so we can design anything we can imagine,” says Mr Williams. Old displays have been sold to cities around the world, including Barcelona and Jeddah. And we’ve introduced some large LED screens that are absolutely brilliant.”įew people realise that not only are all the lights designed and hung up by the Illuminations’ own artists, electricians, joiners, mechanics, painters, engineers and technicians, but they are also manufactured in Blackpool. If you asked me what my favourite tableau was just this year, I would say it’s the Venus Reborn tableau. We do projections onto the front of buildings. Mr Williams’s great passion is lighting: “My favourite light medium is lasers because of the impact and the speed that they react. Richard Williams in the depot with some of the creative designs (Photograph: Visit Blackpool) ![]()
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