The Lighting Professional's Challenge: a conversation with Andrew Bissel

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Hello everyone.
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This is Amardeep Dugar signing in for the Virtual Lighting Design Community.
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We are in Dubai again for the Light Middle East.
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It's been a great show.
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We have a beautiful and amazing booth here and we have an amazing guest with us for our Light Talks to continue the discussion about all the things lighting.
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So, andrew, can I ask you to introduce yourself and say what you do a little bit about yourself.
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Yeah, sure, so, thank you.
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I'm here with, uh, various hats on um, so I'm here as, uh, the head of the lighting design team for ridge and partners.
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We've been set up about 18 months ago working on a whole variety of projects prime, residential, hospitality, motor racing projects, various other office place work, but also dark sky projects, which are probably what we're known for really at the moment.
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The second reason I'm here is because we're working on the Red Sea project as dark sky consultants for Red Sea Global and it worked really well to tie in a meeting with ruskin hartley, with the client, andrew bates, and travel to site and see the projects that are finished, see some of the assets that are halfway through and just have a look at the good, the bad and the ugly.
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Where are we up to?
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What's worked, what hasn, what hasn't, etc.
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And that's been so worthwhile.
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And it worked to go there before coming here on the basis that it fitted with the moon cycles, we needed the moon below the horizon, etc.
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So this has all worked out nicely.
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And then I'm also here.
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I'm last year's President of the Society of Light and Lighting.
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This year the President is Helen Looms, but Brendan Keeley is here as the secretary of the Society of Light and Lighting and we have a stand here just to raise awareness of the society within this region, trying to attract new members, try and see what our current members are up to, what help they need from us, and I'm just helping Brendan out as and when he needs me.
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So a really full two weeks.
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That's a lot of hats.
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My god, you could be a champion at multitasking.
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I wouldn't say a champion at multitasking, forced multitasking.
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So have you been to Light Middle East before?
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Is this your first time?
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Your second time?
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First time at Light Middle East, middle east, um, and, and it's impressive, it's, it's huge.
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I mean, I mean obviously, uh, lights, this section is big, but there are other sections.
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You've got a smart building section, we've got security sections.
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It's huge, but certainly the light section is impressive, really impressive.
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And uh, manufacturers you know, and you've always known some of them with, uh, things you've not before.
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Always worth coming to these events to see things you've not seen before.
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But then lots of manufacturers you haven't heard of, yeah, you may have seen their products, you may not, but you didn't know it was theirs.
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So, absolutely fantastic.
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But I mean the talks, the Think Like conference, have really been the icing on the cake Highlight of the year.
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Oh, for sure, because you can see the products.
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But then to hear from so many wonderful people you know them, you know of them, you know of their work, but you're actually listening to them.
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There's Andrea and various other people are talking at the moment about setting up a lighting business.
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I mean that's not easy, yeah, yeah, yeah, that talk could go on for weeks and I think that they have a keynote speaker.
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Then they have five or six other speakers come and give slightly different takes.
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I was involved in the Dark Sky one, but we then also had Ruskin there from Dark Sky International, we had the client Andrew Bates there from Red Sea Global, then we had various lighting designers, so you know, to get all those different takes on that same subject and the questions from the audience.
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Clearly this is something people are working on and they want to know more about.
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So absolute first-class conference, first-class conference.
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Yeah, it has been really impressive.
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And I've been here I think this is probably my fifth time and I've seen this thing grow and the manner it has been grown.
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You can actually make out from the size of the aisle spaces.
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So they're just getting narrower and narrower, so you can only say the booths are getting bigger.
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There are more and more booths that are happening.
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And there are some really impressive booths here.
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You know, the sort of thing you normally only see at Frankfurt.
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It's here, you know, so people are obviously investing in coming here.
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But as a lighting designer, it's brilliant, you know everything's so close.
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The smart technology section is really useful to go into as well, which is right next door to the lighting, for obvious reasons, so first-class place to be.
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Great.
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Now the conference.
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You mentioned about the conference, the Think Light conference.
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The theme this year was Enlightened Futures and they've talked about responsibility.
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Responsibility is a big word and it's a very broad word.
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Now, you've been a lighting designer.
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You've had so many hats as a president of a society, a leader of your team, even things like responsibility of social and environmental responsibility.
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What are the ways?
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How would you define responsibility?
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It's so broad.
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It incredibly broad and it it's actually quite a frustration of mine and I don't know if it's age or or if it's wisdom, possibly age the longer you're in the industry, the more frustrated you get that you're learning all the time about how how much of an influence light has on the environment, on people, on wildlife, everything we touch, everything.
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You know without light, you know what can you do and you know it's uh, and therefore we have such um, such an impact on, on everything that everybody does, and yet it still seems to be the forgotten person around the design table.
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You know, people have an opinion and they chuck it in no knowledge, no training, no education.
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They have an opinion.
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Others guess you know, I'll take a guess you know others have an ego and they want to chuck something in and you're sat there and you're just thinking when, when, when do we reach a point?
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As lighting professionals and that was part of my talk when I gave the keynote that you know, as part of dark skies, we need this participation of advocates, we need the certification for a business model and we need the legislation from government to drive certain industries, because they won't drive themselves.
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But you also need the lighting professional.
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Yeah, every poor project didn't have a lighting professional.
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The one thing missing every poor project didn't have a lighting professional.
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And the one thing missing every poor project didn't have a lighting professional.
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And yet we're still saying this 30 years.
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We're still saying this and I really do think the industry built environment industry has to grow up and recognize they have a responsibility to get this right.
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We, as lighting professionals, can sit as part of that table and get this right.
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We, as lighting professionals, can sit as part of that table and get that right.
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And for some reason and I've thought about it long and hard and I think I've been polite about this issue for a long time, but maybe age- is making me reach a point.
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I think we need to just say stop talking.
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You don't know what you're talking about, but there are a lot of people who do and they will make this better for everybody who uses this building and space.
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We can make this better.
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You are making it no better.
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Please, you know, stick to what you know and we'll stick to what we know.
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And I think we are unfortunately getting to that point because I think we've done enough education.
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I think you know, you.
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You look at VLDC, society of Light and Light and International Association of Lighting Designers, institution of Lighting Professionals, lighting Industry Association.
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We've got so many professional bodies with so many professionals, but we can't quite find ourselves always on a project, and we should always be on a project.
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And so we've done enough.
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We, we are educated, we are knowledgeable, you know creatively, technically you know and responsible.
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We design responsibly.
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You only have to listen to all the talks you know, and one of the themes yesterday there's no such thing anymore as a lighting designer who does dark sky projects and a lighting designer who does non-dark sky projects.
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We just do dark sky projects, we just do responsible design.
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And that's what we're doing.
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And I don't know what the answer is.
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I really wish I knew what the answer was.
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I guess we keep talking.
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I guess we keep banging the drum.
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I guess we keep highlighting the fabulous work that is done by lighting professionals.
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I was at a talk last year with the Lighting Industry Association.
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Asia set up a beautiful lunch and AGM and I went to the lunch and she managed to secure Lord Deben as a speaker and he spoke about sustainability and circular economy.
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Fabulous speaker.
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No notes, no slides, slides.
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Oh wow, true speed.
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I mean it was one and you listened.
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There was no slides so you listen and it was amazing, I hadn't ever experienced that before.
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But but he actually stood at one point and said well, you are the professionals in the lighting industry.
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You can solve all of the lighting problems, whether it's manufacturing, whether it's design, whether lighting problems, whether it's manufacturing, whether it's design, whether it's engineering, whether it's technology, you can solve all this.
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You understand people and eyes and emotions and biology.
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You can solve it.
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And here we are a year later chatting about it again.
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So let's find that magic trick and then deal with it.
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Now, I mean, you touched upon this topic about we have a responsibility, but somehow I don't know whether it's something which I'm feeling in person, but the problem is that we live in these silos and we lighting professionals only talk to lighting professionals.
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Shouldn't we be talking a little bit more?
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Widening and broadening it, and that was one of the reasons where we worked on building this virtual lighting design community.
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Yeah, I think you've hit the nail on the head in the sense that when I was president last year, I had three things I wanted to look at.
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I was very interested in how we have more younger people doing more within the society of lighting.
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And we've now got Maria, who's launched the early career community for the SLL, and we need those people coming through because they're the ones who are going to have to take on this mantle of how we get lighting as a profession more accepted and out there.
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So let's do that now.
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And this seems to be along those same lines that you haven't targeted the early careers, but you certainly are attracted more of the early careers.
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So that's great, that's really positive.
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But the other idea for the Society of Light and Lighting for my presidential year was Dark Skies, which we talked about a lot.
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But the final thing was to get out there and talk to more people.
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Not talk to lighting designers but or the lighting community, but talk to um quantity surveyors, project managers, um architects, interior designers.
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And it was the last thing I was I targeted doing and in some respects I ran out of time and I've carried on doing it this year, in my past presidential year and I'll probably carry on doing it for as long as slL are happy for me to do so.
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It's really difficult.
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What I found is really difficult.
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I did a quick survey and I asked various different people have you heard of ILD, sll, vldc?
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Actually, very, very few had heard of us.
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Project managers, qss, architects very few, and the most popular or recognised body was the Institution of Lighting Professionals, and that was amongst project managers and planners who had had to deal with light pollution, because they have such a strong light pollution guidance GN01, as we all know.
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So they were the ones who were most well known because of planning, not because of design or because something looks pretty or works well or technically competent or all the other things we know about lighting, your biology, physiology, etc.
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It was actually all to do with planning and planning guidance.
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So we've got a huge, huge, huge task ahead of us.
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I think things like this work.
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I do wonder.
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I mean, just based on what you said, I'm just throwing things out there virtual lighting design community will attract lighters.
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Virtual design community may attract the design community that's, that's.
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I'm not saying I'm not saying let's go and cross out the L from your name right now, but yeah, isn't it just?
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But is there a danger that SLL, ilp, lia, ild, ies, now VLDC?
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Have we got six silos?
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Yeah, are we actually even worse?
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Worse?
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I don't think we are.
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I'm just chucking it out there, but it's always good for you.
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Let's explore.
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Let's be self-critical about it.
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Let's explore.
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Okay, how do we make sure you don't have to join six organizations to talk to all these amazing people?
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And then how do we all promote each other for the right reasons and not compete?
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We're on the same side, we are all on the same side.
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We want the same side.
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We are all on the same side.
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We want the same thing.
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How do we make sure that happens?
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It's a tough, tough task and one of the things I found when I was asking people.
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So you ask bodies such as RICS or RTPI Royal Town Planning Institute they're actually so busy looking after their own members.
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The thought of having to set up an event with another body and all the communication that is required.
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It's complicated.
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And do they have the resource?
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Do any of us have the resource?
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You know so and I know from SLL we are maxed out in terms of how much effort it takes to look after our members doing the things we do and to reach out, and brendan did a fabulous job with the roland conference, for example, and that did include other bodies, but but it really took up every ounce of his energy and he had a two-week lie down afterwards.
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It took up so much time to explore other people to create this most wonderful conference that included so many other people.
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Try now doing that with REBA, and then the equivalent in the Middle East, and then the equivalent in Australia, and then RICS and then RTPI.
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Wow, what a task we've got on our hands.
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What a task we've got on our hands.
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I don't have an answer, but that is where we need to be.
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As I said, I was helping out on the Society of Light and Lighting stand with Brendan and we had somebody come to talk to us about an event that might be taking place in Saudi Arabia in September and it's a built environment event and what's interesting there is.
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We asked about speaking slots.
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How do SNL get involved?
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How do the other lighting bodies get involved?
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They said they don't want a lighting section to the conference.
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They want everyone dispersed amongst each other and they want every panel to have an architect and a lighting designer and suddenly we were like yes, that's where we need to be.
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Perhaps we ought to stop coming.
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This is awful.
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I shouldn't say it.
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I'll get hooked off by the organisers in a minute.
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They won't let me fly home or something.
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But you know, maybe, yes, these are great For lighters.
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This is magical.
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I can see so many people I need to see quickly and easily.
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But perhaps and the conference is great if I want to learn from other lighting designers, but maybe it needs to be 50-50.
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Maybe it's a mixed bag then lighting, mixed bag, then lighting.
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We could talk about this so much, but we do need to become more well-known, and it's our job to do that.
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It's not their fault.
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It's our job to do that, it's not their fault.
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It's our job to do that.
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Anyway, thank you so much, Andrew.
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Thank you.
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It was great.
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Thank you for coming guys.
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It was a great conversation.
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We could have talked for ages, but then we have other things to do.
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We have a talk to do.
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We have a talk to do, Thank you.
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Fabulous, thank you.