International Year of Light 2015 | Light Collective

Guest post by Light Collective. The International Year of Light (IYL 2015) is well underway, but we're not convinced many people know what it's all about yet. If you do, then we commend you. If you don't, we recommend you do. Here's the Light Collective summary. What is the IYL 2015? The full title is the United Nations International Year of Light and Light-based Technologies 2015. The UN wants to promote understanding of the role played by light and lighting technology in the modern world. 2015 was chosen because it marks a number of major anniversaries in the study and development of lighting. What’s the point of the IYL 2015? The main goal of the IYL 2015 is to show how lighting technologies can improve quality of life and solve global challenges in energy, education, agriculture, communications and health. The UN also aims to reduce light pollution and energy waste, to promote women’s empowerment in science and education amongst young people. Like electricity in the 20th century, lighting technology has the potential to revolutionise the 21st century. How are the goals going to be achieved? There are a series of events and initiatives worldwide to promote light and lighting technologies. It's a cross-disciplinary educational and outreach project in over 85 countries and with more than 100 partners. The programme in the UK includes everything from formal academic events, through hands-on exhibitions, to a dusk to dawn event where strangers and artists are invited to discover, create and make lasting memories. Who is sponsoring the IYL 2015 The IYL 2015 is supported and sponsored by a broad range of lighting manufacturers, professional and scientific bodies, and universities and educational organisations. How can you be involved in the IYL2015? Be part of the events program - either by going to one of the events already organised or organising your won. It doesn't have to be something that costs lots of money nor do you need to have years of experience. Light Collective is encouraging lighting designers to offer lighting design clinics and open their offices, go into a local school to talk about light, organise project tours or just make some light happen in the street… What's the Light Collective take on the IYL 2015? The lighting design industry is not huge. The Mondo International Lighting Designers Survey includes approximately 1200 consultancies worldwide. There are many organisations which purport to serve the needs of this quite small community. This leads to a lot of fragmentation and each organisation has its own agenda. We're keen on the Lighting Related Organisations (L-RO) initiative which gives the lighting design industry an opportunity to speak with one voice. What is L-RO? Lighting-Related Organisations (L-RO) is the result of the hard work and commitment of Chiara Carucci, a passionate Italian lighting designer. It represents a broad global professional community of people who work with light and lighting in the built environment. The representatives of 30 associations, collectives, universities and media from 20 countries formed L-RO in April 2014. The aim is to achieve the public recognition of lighting design and education embodied in the IYL 2015. L-RO launched a Call for Ideas for events to frame the general concept of the IYL 2015, to allow lighting designers to contribute and tap into the constantly growing lighting community. Managed entirely on a volunteer basis, the L-RO effort is the only global repository of IYL 2015 events and activities related to light in the built environment and will co-ordinate an international general activities programme. In the next Light Collective guest post, we're going to list the events we think are must-see for IYL 2015.