From Newcastle to the New Forest, Tate Modern to the National Remembrance Gardens, to Belfast and beyond, it has been an autumn of engaging and insightful regional CPD for ILP President Michala Medcalf. Not to mention glowing penguins at London Zoo…
By Michala Medcalf
The autumn kicked off with a bang with the DarkSky UK ‘Good lighting – from pollution to solution’ conference in Newcastle.
Dark skies and sustainable lighting is something I am quite evangelical about; it was an excellent event, really uplifting. All the papers throughout the day were insightful and thought-provoking.
As someone in fact articulated at the conference, we’ve not had our David Attenborough ‘plastic in the sea’ moment within lighting. Yet when it comes to light pollution, we all know that, of all the pollutants out there, lighting is reversible. We have it in our gift to change that narrative.
For me, therefore, hearing the great work people are doing up and down the country – and there were talks from Northumbria, County Mayo, the South Downs, and North Yorkshire Moors, among others – was amazing.
The next, and even more pressing, question for me, however, is how do we start moving this conversation into dark skies for cities and large towns? There is ambition here; York University, for example, is doing a really interesting piece of work where they’re making their estates more dark skies-friendly. Other towns and cities, too, are actively looking towards controlling or limiting light during the hours of darkness. So, what can we learn from those?
MEMORANDUM OF UNDERSTANDING
I really feel there is momentum developing here, not least in the memorandum of understanding that ILP agreed with DarkSky UK. It is something that really resonates with me personally and professionally. So I’m very much looking forward to how we can support and build on that going forward.
From Newcastle it was then right down to the other end of the country to the Western Region’s CPD event at the Pig Beer Brewery in Brockenhurst in the New Forest.
It was a brilliant, absolutely brilliant, and kudos to the team from INDO for hosting us there, and to Chair Richard Chaplin for co-ordinating and organising the event. The weather was glorious and the area is absolutely gorgeous, very conducive to relaxed conversation – I mean it was in a brewery! – but the papers across the board were intriguing and thought provoking.
Richard also ran a charity raffle collection for Alzheimer’s UK, and played a very moving three-minute Alzheimer’s Research UK promotional video. It stunned me, and no doubt others too; it was very, very powerful. In fact, So much so, that I was supposed to stand up and speak afterwards and was absolutely choked up!
It is an important conversation we all need to be having because dementia affects so many of us. In fact, approximately one in three people born today will develop dementia in their lifetime, according to data from organisations like Alzheimer’s Research UK.
There were also speakers – notably Bradley Russell of DFL – who were speaking in public for the first time, which is always something to be celebrated. So kudos, too, to him, and all the rest of the day’s speakers.
Next up in September was my first time as President at a How To Be Brilliant event. This brought together a team of young designers from Arup, overseen by Florence Lam. I particularly enjoyed Coleman Deady Ridge’s talk on his glowing penguins at London Zoo and working out the calculations for how to do daylighting underwater, which was just on another level. It was really quite engaging; I mean who doesn’t want to know that?!
Sometimes we just need lighting topics that sit outside the normal lanes we operate in, and How To Be Brilliant more often than not does just that. I also should take a moment here to thank Lutron for their continuing sponsorship of How To Be Brilliant this year and, now, into 2027 – it is truly appreciated.
‘ELECTRIC AVENUE’ EVENT
The next day – so another Premier Inn breakfast – was the London and South East Region’s ‘Electric Avenue’ event at the Tate Modern on Southbank.
It was an amazing venue for Ryan McGibbon’s first CPD event as Chair, and the quality of the papers was extremely high, from Nick Smith’s deep dive into our updated, revised guidance note PLG02/26 The Application Of Conflict Areas On The Highway through to the connection between AI and future cities as well as an insightful panel discussion.
I was particularly impressed by the talk on AI from Simon Hobbs of Electrical Testing, which I thought was exceptional and which, again, I know has been written up elsewhere in this edition.
It was also with great excitement that Justin Blades was able to use the event to announce that the ILP will be holding a new headline Lighting Live event next autumn on innovation and technology. Very much watch this space for more on that in the coming months.
After London and South East, I hugely enjoyed the Midlands Region’s ‘The future is EV’ event at the Royal British Legion National Remembrance Gardens in Staffordshire. It was a joint event with the WLP and YLP and, again, had a very diverse and engaging speaker line-up.
The only pity was that it clashed with the North East Region’s Technical Meeting at Thorn Spennymoor – I would have liked to have been at both, but will endeavour to make it to a North East meeting just as soon as I possibly can.
I did, however, manage to make it to the Irish Region’s Autumn Seminar in Belfast at the end of last month which, again, it was great to reconnect with familiar faces and to continue building stronger relationships with so many members from the region.
LOOKING TO 2027
Finally, with this being the final edition – and so final Medcalf’s Memo – of 2026 it is worth looking forward briefly to 2027. The pace of the presidential year will, I fully expect, not let up in the slightest; I am particularly looking forward to our Lighting Live – Local Authority event in Daventry in February, which always generates important conversations.
Then, in April, I will be attending the LUCI Association’s Cities and Lighting Summit in Fez – which is probably the furthest afield I expect to get for the ILP during my Presidential year! I very much hope to build on the partnership agreement we signed with LUCI last year following its similar event in London.
I’m also looking forward to continuing collaboration and engagement with the LIA, SLL and HEA, with a range of events and collaborations currently being pencilled in for spring, especially around promoting women within engineering. Continuing to build these rich industry relationships is so important.
It is going to be a fascinating few months, and I’ll look forward up updating you again in the new year.
Michala Medcalf CEng MILP is President of the ILP as well as street lighting manager at Derby City Council
Image: Michala Medcalf at the London and South East ‘Electric Avenue’ event. Nic Paton
