WIL Sessions at LuxLive 2020

WIL sessions at Lux Live are supported by SLL and ILP

Video-on-Demand   Programme   Roundtables

12th Nov 2020

14:00 — 14:40
Roundtable with live Q&A moderated by Juliet Rennie
Kael Gillam, Kaye Preston and Rhiannon Laurie
Anna Kharchenkova
Eve Gaut

14:40 — 15:20
Roundtable with live Q&A moderated by Dipali Shirsat
Kristina Allison
Katia Kolovea and Deniz Ural

15:20 — 16:00
Light Space with live Q&A
Elettra Bordonaro
Manal Kahale

HOW TO LOOK AFTER YOUR MENTAL HEALTH
Kael Gillam

Bio
Kael is an architectural lighting designer with a background in theatre and a thirst for tackling the difficult things in life. With brilliant doctors and nurses in her family, she has always been obsessed with learning how the mind and body work. Through her sporadic psychology study and her own first-hand experiences with talk therapy, Kael wants to broaden people’s minds and teach them to be more attuned to their environment, their emotions, and their bodies. She currently works at Nulty+ in London as a Senior Designer.

Synopsis
As designers, we have unique pressures from countless different sources in our professional lives, all seemingly centred on creating the best and being the best. Clients expect nothing but excellence from the consultants they employ, and designers are notorious for never being quite satisfied with even their most accomplished works. We are also a pretty tireless lot; late nights, weekends, and holidays are often no boundary to ensuring that projects get the attention they so rightly need. Our aim at Designers Mind is to cut through the status quo and help designers establish habits that benefit themselves across all areas of their lives. We know that there are damaging yet long-established norms in the design industry that wear people down and cause burnout. Our mission is to shake off stereotypes and rewrite potentially damaging proscriptive routes to success. This presentation will address how designers and our employers can better address mental and physical wellbeing; we’ll be sharing strategies and personal stories that we hope everyone can learn from and add to their wellness toolboxes.
Twitter: @designersmind_ // Insta: @designersmindforum

HOW TO BECOME FASTER BY SLOWING DOWN
Anna Kharchenkova (Intangible.world)

Bio
Anna started her career in lighting in Moscow in 2006, where she co-founded a lighting practice and led it to become the top 3 on the local market. She moved to London to join Light Bureau in 2014. In 5 years Anna helped turn around the business, became a director of the London office and the board member of the practice upon acquisition by AFRY. After spending 13 years in the industry and several burn-outs Anna left on a quest for a more balanced lifestyle. Recovering workaholic and perfectionist, she now works independently consulting both in lighting design and management in the design industry with the goal to help creative businesses built better working environments and financial sustainability.

Synopsis
Imagine the world where every morning you wake up looking forward to the day ahead. The world, where you are full of energy, where you enjoy what you do, and there is time for everything that is important to you. Imagine, that it actually could be possible, even though it seems unlikely. The architecture and design industry is famous for long hours, perfectionism and workaholism. So many of us consistently find ourselves by computers and night time and over weekends, feeling more overwhelmed than excited by what we do.  It’s time to make the change. Whether you are just starting out, or have been running your own company for years – if you always feel busy, but not much is getting done, if you are stressed and you wish for more hours in a day,  join us. We’ll show you how the magic of slowing down the pace can make much more fulfilled, and much faster as a bonus.

HOW TO BECOME A SOCIAL BUTTERFLY
Eve Gaut

Bio
Eve is the founder of Parrot PR and Marketing, a creative marketing agency working across a range of sectors. A highly motivated, successful and experienced marketing and PR professional, Eve has built up an enviable reputation. Having worked primarily in the specification industry for more than 15 years, her expertise has been proven in a variety of roles, across numerous disciplines and with leading brands.

Synopsis
“Before people buy from you, they need to buy into you”. This simple yet powerful statement encapsulates the importance of marketing yourself. Thanks to the arrival of social media and digital communication, there have never been more opportunities to sell yourself and what you have to offer. Yet many of us don’t make the most of what is available to us. The good news is that by implementing just a handful of simple changes to your online presence, you can make a big difference to how you sell yourself. In this presentation, delivered by Eve Gaut, Founder of Parrot PR and Marketing you will learn how to capitalise on the opportunities presented by the online world. You will also gain an insight into how to make online connections, and how to bring together your personal profiles and your overarching organisational channels. Eve brings 15 years of experience, combined with a passion for all things social to this talk, as she aims to help you become a social butterfly by the end of it.

HOW TO GET PROFESSIONAL RECOGNITION AS A LIGHTING DESIGNER
Kristina Allison

Bio
Kristina has worked in the lighting industry as a designer and consultant for 14 years, currently working as a senior lighting designer in the Atkins specialist lighting team in London. Currently working as a senior lighting designer for Atkins Global within the lighting team; her recent projects have included London City Airport expansion project, Euston Station redevelopment and Southampton Cruise Terminal. During her time at Zumotbel (ZG) Lighting projects with the End User retail team included Jaguar Landrover, London Olympia, Dixons, Bentley Motor and large roll out projects for LIDL retail, Sainsbury''s and ASDA. Previously, Kristina ran her own design consultancy practice, with clients such as the Carbon Trust and the Electrical Contractors Association (ECA). Her experience as consultant included advice for the Building Research Establishment (BRE), Lancaster House, Edinburgh airport, BAA, Greenwich University and lighting designer for the Dementia Services Development Centre (DSDC) and continues to be a guest lecturer at City University London. Kristina is a Chartered Engineer, Member of the Society of Light and Lighting (MSLL), Member of CIBSE (MCIBSE) and Chair of the Society of Light and Lighting (SLL) Education committee.

Synopsis
Lighting designers can get a bit of a rough ride at times and do not often get the recognition from other architectural or building service industries as being technical or fobbed off with 'an electrical engineer can do that' type comments. The SLL / CIBSE offers a route to Chartership (as do the ILP) that can give us the credentials equal to other disciplines that demonstrate we are on an equal playing field. Kristina will discuss her own route to chartership - the reasons why she was so motivated to take on the challenge and why other lighting professionals should also seek professional status too.
SLL Light Lines Article: Chance to Charter a New Course
SLL Webinar: The Alternative Route to CEng
CIBSE MCIBSE / CEng: Fact Sheet M20
CIBSE: Competency Criteria M21
Engineering Council: UK-SPEC Competency Criteria
Engineering Council: Pocket Guide to Registration 2020
Engineering Council: UK-SPEC, Fourth Edition, 2021

HOW TO BE IN THE MOMENT THROUGH LIGHT 
Katia Kolovea & Deniz Ural

Bio
Deniz is a designer, researcher, and a storyteller, fascinated by the power of presence and senses in healing people’s lives. She now works as a researcher and designer at Humanistic. Katia is a lighting enthusiast, designer, a communication strategist, and the founder of Archifos. She loves creating and collaborating with brilliant minds. With their mutual passion to bring people together, they will share their journey of living in the moment through light.

Synopsis
Living in the moment is the most powerful thing that we can do in a world filled with anxiety and uncertainty, especially during a world health crisis like a pandemic. It has become more important than ever to teach mindfulness as a way of experiencing, where people’s sensory awareness is maximized to absorb the full effects of a moment. Light has the power to expand our sense of presence by bringing our attention to the moment as it holds a powerful place in our lives, evoking emotions, transforming spaces, providing a sense of sight and safety, and overall making us see our surrounding environment. Light can be natural or artificial and both can be manipulated in many different forms and combinations to achieve the intended result.

In this presentation, Deniz and Katia will take you through a virtual, sensory, and interactive experience, introducing the concept of presence through light and defining immersive experiences. In the end, the presenters will share three practical tools on how to practice presence in our everyday lives and invite all the participants to join them in the search of magic in everyday life.

LIGHT FOR SOCIAL IMPACT
Elettra Bordonaro

Bio
She is founder and creative director at Light Follows Behaviour, lighting design studio with the aim to design with people and for people. With a PhD in urban lighting, Elettra has a background as architect. She has focused her attention on light and worked as lighting designer consultant on masterplan, exterior and public realm lighting. She has been teaching at the University of Rome, Milan and Turin and she has been four years visiting professor at Rhode Island School of Art and Design, Providence, USA. She is also co-founder of the Social Light Movement (SLM) with aim to bring lighting to less affluent communities. She is Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics at the Sociology Department as part of the Configuring Light / Staging the Social research group working on various research projects integrating social research in lighting design.

Synopsis
At Light Follows Behaviour, we have extensive experience in social housing estates and council works. We believe through lighting we can evaluate and see inequalities in the public space. As well through lighting we can tackle this issue and improve the society we live in. We have been involved in the full range of community engagement, consultation and social research processes, with a particular track record in developing new approaches to conducting and integrating social research. Our design approach and methodology aim at deep analysis of both the lighting space and the social space, in order to base lighting on integrated technical and stakeholder understanding. Some examples and case studies will be presented to show how it is possible to improve and to have a social impact on housing estates, new public spaces and common areas. Furthermore, the pandemic has raised some questions that we are all aware of. We deem it important to understand which issues we need to tackle and urgently address to move forward in the right direction.

LIGHT For LEBANON 
Manal Kahale

Bio
Raised in Lebanon, Manal studied Landscape Architecture at the American University of Beirut and holds a master’s degree in Lighting Design from Parsons. Thereafter, she worked in the USA for four years before deciding to come back to Lebanon to try and bridge both worlds through lighting. However, her return to to Lebanon was more difficult than anticipated with the unfolding of an economic, financial, and monetary crisis as well as the COVID-19 pandemic, and finally on the 4th of August 2020, the biggest non-nuclear explosion ever recorded. This catastrophe unlocked feelings of communal support triggered by the complete absence of any relief efforts on the part of the Lebanese government. As a result, Manal decided to use her knowledge and experience to partake in relief efforts both as an active citizen and a lighting activist.

Synopsis
On August 4th 2020, Beirut underwent a terrible catastrophe. Taking place in a year that included protests, economic collapse and Covid, the blast devastated the city and its people. Manal will share how the project Light for Lebanon began. She will speak about the need for the project and how as lighting designers, we can influence situations on a social, political and economic level using light to create solutions in the short and long term.