Global Gathering The Women In Lighting Global Gathering returned this March, celebrating International Women’s Day and connecting the global WIL network.
Women In Lighting (WIL) brought back the Global Gathering this March to celebrate International Women’s Day, as well as the third anniversary of the Women In Lighting project. The event aimed to further connect the growing WIL network and community together. This year, the event was divided into three parts to ensure that presentations and participation could come from different time zones around the world. Proceedings opened with speakers from Asia and the Pacific, with the second session covering Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and the final session of the day focused on the Americas. The line up for each time zone was split into the following sections: Global Light: Light around the world. Six lighting designers who all live in different lighting conditions shared their ‘local light’ in a short presentation. This section had informative presentations from Anujna Dyaneshwar in India and Pila Rattarangsi in Thailand; a view of the politics of light in Lebanon from Manal Kahale; and intimate and poetic descriptions from Diana Joels in Brazil, Malcolm Innes in Scotland and Claudia Kappl-Joy in the USA. Global Action: This section looked at the different initiatives that the lighting community is doing to make the world of light a better, more balanced and more informed place, with presentations from Hoa Yang in Australia on the effect of urban planning on perceptions of safety for women and girls; a talk on male allyship from Neil Knowles in the UK; and from Leela Shankar in the USA on the circular economy and embodied carbon on design.
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Global Journey: Here the event delved into the unique lighting journey of three varied members of the lighting community. Jett Blyth talked with Light Collective about being a female electrician in Melbourne, Australia; Nish Shah shared her personal journey from junior designer to Design Director at Lighting Design International; and Paul Gregory, President and Founder of Focus Lighting in New York, talked through some of his career highlights and shared some tips for aspiring designers. Global Work: This section allowed WIL to explore how we are all connected by design, by projects, by the tools and techniques we use. Speakers here talked about their work around the globe. In Asia, project presentations came from Aviva Gunzberg in Australia; architect Otto Ng and the Sky NOA team in Hong Kong; and Chanyaporn Bstieler in Thailand. In the Europe/MEA session, Melissa Mak in the UK; Stéphanie Daniel from France’ Paula Rainha from Portugal and Regina Santos from the UAE shared unique projects that they had completed. The final section included Emily Bornt in the USA; Patricia Bernal in Mexico; Priscila Pacheco in Brazil; and Antonia Peón-Veiga in Chile. Projects covered included hospitals, hotels, stage lighting, art projects and museums. This section was finished off with three miniinterviews from WIL’s Katia Kolovea on specific projects. These included Noriko Higashi from Japan sharing the work of The Lighting Detectives; Raquel Rosildete sharing her project – The Colours In-between; and Jane Slade discussing her work to raise awareness of light pollution. All presentations are available to revisit on the WIL website. Each section was concluded with a Global Roulette – a popular feature from virtual WIL events, the hour-long sessions allowed for free-flowing conversation where participants could virtually meet and share backgrounds, inspirations and daily lives in three-minute conversations. The Global Roulette was voted by participants as their favourite opportunity of the event in an online poll, followed closely by the Global Light presentations.