If you are wondering what the new Christmas lights in central Brixton are and where they came from, we have the answers.
The “Winter Wonder Lights” are the work of local Lambeth school pupils – many of them from Brixton.
Some date back to 2017 when Squire and Partners, the international architects based on Ferndale Road, first helped local primary school pupils to create light-based artworks to decorate the windows of their Department Store headquarters.
Since then, the “winter windows” have spread from Ferndale Road to London’s Southbank cultural powerhouse and to our own Brixton House theatre.
Now, after working closely with Squire & Partners over the past year, the Brixton Business Improvement District (BID) has turned nearly 50 of the designs into lamppost decorations.
Produced by the specialist lighting company Blachere, they use low consumption LED lights with coloured casings made from recycled plastic bottles.
As more designs are created each year, the number of lights will grow and expand across the district.
“With our Winter Wonder Lights, we want to celebrate everything that Brixton is about: creativity, community and young people,” said BID managing director Gianluca Rizzo.
“The collaboration with Squire & Partners to extend the winter windows across our town centre puts the work of local young creative pupils at the heart of Brixton.
“There is no better way to celebrate the festive period than visiting your local favourite shops and venues and showing Brixton some love.”
Tim Gledstone, a partner at Squire & Partners, and a board member Brixton BID, said: “Since moving to The Department Store, Brixton in 2017, the Winter Windows programme has been an integral part of our annual events calendar.
“Born out of our ongoing commitment to connect with local people of all generations, we developed the initiative with our in-house modelmaking team to promote the importance, opportunity, and joy that design and creativity bring.
“For the past eight years, we have invited Lambeth school children to a workshop at The Department Store to explore their inner artistry, setting them the task of creating shapes based around various themes – from emotions and feeling, to Dreamland and Wonderland.
“Their fantastically creative ideas and musings are then translated from drawings on a page into large scale neon lights by the modelshop, and suspended in our shop front windows throughout the dark, winter months for all to enjoy.
“Over the years the initiative has grown and spread across the borough – with cultural institutions such as Southbank Centre and Brixton House Theatre commissioning their own Winter Window installations.
“Light brings joy, and we are so pleased that eight years’ worth of designs have been repurposed and given a second life as mounted lamppost lights around Brixton this winter.
“Not only will the designs continue spreading happiness and positivity throughout Brixton, but they will also remind the children that took part (some of whom are now 18 years old!) that art and design are enduring and powerful community tools.
“The lamppost project will expand year on year as new designs are created through the Winter Windows programme, brightening new corners of Brixton and spreading light across the borough into the future.”
Southbank Centre – Europe’s largest centre for the arts – commissioned Squire & Partners for a second year running to create a set of lights for the Queen Elizabeth Hall (QEH) as part of its 2024 Winter Light festival.
Young creatives from Brixton’s Sudbourne primary school in Brixton and Oasis Academy Johanna in Waterloo were asked to propose designs based on the theme of “Wonderland” to light up QEH and the Department Store on Ferndale Road.
Students, teachers, friends and families were invited to a switching on ceremony earlier this month to see their ideas come to life in both sets of windows.
The final designs include a ghost, a globe in an ice cream cone, a tulip and a grinning Cheshire Cat.
Working with the Southbank Centre’s site curation team, Squire & Partners’ modelshop built a reusable frame for the vast windows of QEH in 2023 to suspend five light artworks designed by year six students at Oasis Academy Johanna in nearby Waterloo.
They are displayed once again this year, with two new designs have been added.
The young people’s work sits alongside pieces by artists including Aoife Dunne, Nathaniel Rackowe, Marinella Senatore, David Batchelor, Jakob Kvist, Sophia Al-Maria, Mat Collishaw, Erlend Tait, Fred Tschida, and Denman+Gould with Maeve Polkinhorn.
They are visible from The Embankment, Jubilee Bridge, Waterloo Bridge and beyond by thousands of daily visitors.
