Shine One

From Glasgow’s Botanics to Edinburgh's castle, light installations are bringing a welcome glow to Scotland this festive season. Lucy Ribchester talks to Castle Of Light creative director Andy McGregor about the pleasures and trials of illuminating one of our most historic landmarks

There’s no denying winter is coming. Darkness has set in and the nights have begun to elongate, in their slow march towards the shortest day of the year (21 December if you’re counting). It’s little wonder then, that given the scarcity of natural light at this time of year, humans have always found ways to create and celebrate the human-made kind, either through fireworks, bonfires or, more recently, electric light shows.

This year, the botanic gardens in both Edinburgh and Glasgow are lit up, as will be Dalkeith Country Park and Beecraigs Country Park near Linlithgow, where the annual Festive Forest trail houses the longest light tunnel in Scotland. And for the third year running, Edinburgh Castle will become a beacon of colour and projections thanks to the combined efforts of a co-producing team of lumieres, led by creative director Andy McGregor.

‘Castle Of Light is an extremely colourful show,’ McGregor says. ‘It’s bright. It hopefully dazzles your eyes.’ For this year’s theme, McGregor began thinking about colours in ‘a lateral way’, which gave him the idea of dividing the castle into various zones. ‘There’ll be a green zone, blue zone, red zone. Other zones will be less specific, tying into a more general summation of notions of colour.’ Just like last year, when ‘hidden treasures’ was the theme, history has provided a rich source of inspiration for this year’s installation. ‘I’m lucky enough to work with the people at Historic Environment Scotland,’ McGregor says, ‘so I’ve got this luxury of being able to ask historians about the history of this particular space, and then get a couple of pages of information about it.’

One of McGregor’s discoveries was that light shows have long been associated with Edinburgh Castle. The first firework displays in Scotland were lit on what is now King’s Stables Road (just beneath the castle) in 1507 as part of a pageant King James IV put on, known as the ‘Tournament of the Wild Knight and the Black Lady’ (and currently explored in Rona Munro’s James IV: Queen Of The Fight play).

Later ledgers from the castle show that in 1537, copious quantities of saltpetre, petrol, oil, mercury, and turpentine were ordered by royal ‘fire masters’, alongside thread and wheel-rims, leading historians to believe that the first catherine wheel fireworks were in the process of being developed. The same records have, intriguingly, also listed an entry for ‘usquabae’ (water of life, or, as we more commonly call it, whisky). ‘It’s kind of unclear,’ McGregor says, ‘whether that was an actual component that they thought they could explode, or whether it was just to keep them happy as they were developing these explosives.’

One thing that hasn’t changed from the fire masters of the 16th century to the lighting teams of today is a notion of trial and error; or in today’s case, the various challenges that arise when dealing with a historic royal building. ‘We’re in as listed a building that you can get,’ says McGregor. ‘We can’t fix to anything. We can’t change the colour of the shutters if we want to.’ One of the ways in which the team work around this is to build small sheds to house the projectors, and paint them in sympathetic colours. ‘Hopefully it just disappears during the day. So far so good. We’ve never had any complaints.’

And, of course, the trials are more than balanced by the opportunity to share some of the city’s history with new audiences. While researching the red zone, for instance, McGregor stumbled upon the story of Charles Piazzi Smyth, an astronomer who invented a ‘time ball’ which led to that great (or maddening, depending on your view) Edinburgh institution: the One O’Clock Gun. ‘The show is not a history lesson. But it comes from history, it’s inspired by history, and my hope is that people can take that little bit from it.’

Elsewhere, Dalkeith Country Park’s Spectacle Of Light is also embracing Scotland’s heritage by celebrating Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic Treasure Island in a swashbuckling family adventure. Meanwhile, GlasGLOW’s Botanics installation goes even further back in time, promising dinosaurs, volcanoes and ‘the greatest adventure of your life’.

Given that the concept is gaining traction, is there anywhere on McGregor’s wishlist that he would really love to light up? ‘I’d quite like to do projection on some really modern buildings,’ he says. ‘That building on George Square, a really tall building that on one side says “People Make Glasgow”. On the side facing Queen Street Station: I thought that would make a terrific projection surface.’ It has, after all, something that McGregor, used to working with the idiosyncrasies of historic architecture and ancient rock, would class as something of a luxury: ‘It’s all beautifully flat.’

Castle Of Light: A Kingdom Of Colours, Edinburgh Castle, Friday 18 November–Friday 30 December, castleoflight.scot

GlasGLOW, Glasgow Botanic Gardens, until Sunday 13 November, itison.com/glasglow

Christmas At The Botanics, Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, Thursday 17 November– Friday 30 December, rbge.org.uk

Spectacle Of Light, Dalkeith Country Park, Friday 2–Saturday 31 December, dalkeithcountrypark.co.uk

Festive Forest, Beecraigs Country Park, near Linlithgow, Friday 2–Friday 23 December, beecraigsfestiveforest.com