Illuminova
A nighttime journey through an illuminated forest, built to make you feel like a kid again.
the mission
Build a new breed of light trail. A multi-sensory adventure that put visitors at the heart of the story – a place to explore your own imagination, whatever your age.
Wellington Illuminova was our answer: an illuminated nighttime journey that never grows old.
the beginning
We created Wellington Illuminova in 2022, in collaboration with Wellington Country Park. It started as something rare for us – a project with no client brief to answer to. A chance to design and build a bespoke, ambitious experience entirely on our own terms, and to show what happens when everything sits under one roof.
In 2023, we brought it back for its second year, with an extended route, more immersive technology, and a bigger, bolder version of the world we'd built.
And in 2024, we took everything we learned from previous years and made the finale one to remember – more kit, more technology, more fun.
made to be felt, not just seen.
Naturally the idea behind Wellington Illuminova developed over the years, but the core concept remained the same: create a unique nighttime adventure for all ages to enjoy – crafted with bespoke installations, original musical compositions weaved throughout the journey, and expansive interactivity for visitors to lose themselves in.
We didn't want a trail that was just seen, we wanted something that could be fully experienced – a journey that played with your senses, which is why we experimented with light, sound and scent.
the process
the aim was always emotive moments that stay with you.
If idea was to be felt rather than watched, the biggest design decision was structure. So we built the trail as a story, not a random sequence of installations. Guests followed a journey through an illuminated forest, each chapter with its own world and its own mood.
Underneath it all sat a single principle: imagination captures imaginations. Every choice came back to that – build something a bit more imaginative than a visitor expects and let them feel like a kid again. Child-like imagination is simply more fun, and that belief shaped everything from the first sketch onwards.
the programming
A trail this size is made to look effortless, but under the surface it's one connected system – timecoded shows, interactive installations, hundreds of lights, atmospheric effects and audio, all synchronised across a single network.
The brain of it lived in the control cabin. At the heart sits QLab, sending audio across the whole 1.2km site over a Dante network with over 100 individual channels and generating the timecode that keeps every media server in sync.
The interactive moments are where it gets fun. Take the drums: beat them and a MIDI trigger travels back to the cabin into TouchDesigner, which generates the content and effects live – firing colour back out to the LEDs and triggering sound effects at the same instant. Play the drum, light the forest, hear it play. The same thinking runs through the other interactive installations across the site.
Several hundred lights and all the atmospheric effects are programmed and run from a single lighting desk. That's what let us start and stop the whole show at the push of a button – and quietly adjust the haze and effects to suit the weather on any given night.
Holding it all together was a redundant 2km fibre network carrying every bit of data, plus site-wide WiFi and CCTV, with almost no latency. When it's all doing its job, you never notice any of it, you just follow the story through the forest.
the production
Working in the great outdoors in the United Kingdom always provides its challenges, and since this project was installed and delivered during the Autumn / Winter, we faced more than our fair share of difficulties!
The installation, show and break down were all masterminded from our on-site control cabin. This became a meeting room, office, canteen, storage space and operations centre for the 7-week build, 5-week live period and 3-week pack down. Despite the hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of equipment that controlled everything on site, the most important piece of kit was undoubtably the kettle!
Weather can be a barrier not just to the enjoyment of a light trail, but to health and safety too. Part of the woodland trail saw a 6m inflatable moon rigged from three trees, and the weather and wind speeds had to be monitored daily to ensure that the moon was not at risk of blowing away! This was also true of our shadow screens and other large and tall structures around the site. If the forecast was too bad, the decision was made jointly with the team at Wellington Country Park to close the attraction for the evening – better safe than sorry!
The duration of the build meant that we had to start this while the park was still open to visitors, meaning that we could only work in very specific areas, and not use any of the heavy plant / access equipment that was needed to build many areas of the trail. Once the park was closed for the season, we had a team working away across the site to get everything completed in time for opening. Limited daylight hours meant that some of this work was done under floodlights and with headtorches, but due to health and safety, only ground level tasks would be completed once daylight had gone.
Although this was a project managed entirely by ourselves, we were partnered with Wellington Country Park, and delivering on their site, so we kept them updated on the progress across site and worked closely with their ranger team to ensure that our environmental impact was as minimal as possible.
wrapping up
Building and developing the experience over three years meant that by 2024 we'd made the most magical version of Illuminova yet. We set out to give visitors an interactive, meaningful journey rather than a series of photo-worthy moments – and the feedback told us it landed. People rebooked year on year, for the creativity, story and detail, not just the photos.
Our own playground. Made from nothing. Run three years. Proof of what we can do when we design and deliver every part ourselves.
made with zeal.