For nearly a decade, LUMA lit up Queenstown for the love of it.
It’s always about the weather, rain and wind being unwanted, no matter what the event. And in the week leading up to LUMA 2024, it’s uncannily warm. Nor’west, the forecast is mixed. But the transformation of the Queenstown Gardens continues regardless. From the council gardeners quietly dead-heading roses and sweeping autumn leaves, the metamorphosis begins – a container arriving, a marquee or three, then utes, trailers, trucks, forklifts, cherry pickers – and a hive of people on foot, on bikes, on radios and cell phones, in trees, under stages and up and down ladders. The WhatsApp messages come thick and fast – “I need a waratah rammer”, “Scrim, we need more scrim everywhere”, “Whoever took Baby Spice you have all my stuff” (you eventually work out Baby Spice is an e-bike), “Dropping roll of matting at teepee”, “Sorted”, “Loo’s blocked” and even, “Where’s my ute?!”
The entire build-up to the operation is slow then swift, a crescendo nothing short of astonishing, until the moment at dusk on the first Thursday night as the generators, lights and speakers are switched on.
This is LUMA. Over what was Queen’s Birthday weekend early June (now, slightly awkwardly, King’s Birthday), the Queenstown Gardens are transformed – sequoia trees, band rotunda, rose gardens and lily pond all offering up the most astonishing canvas on which light artists and composers create and install their magic. The sky lights up with lasers, children dance with fluoro costumes and a garland of lit roses in their hair, crowds look up as dancers appear in silk slings 20 metres above ground in the trees, and music fills remote corners of the forest accompanying hidden treasures of light sculptures. For five light- and sound-filled nights, LUMA appears, and then it is gone, erased. The music and lights evanesce, and the gardens return to the calm of winter. As Simon Holden, one of the originators and creators, says, “We’re building sandcastles. The tide comes in and all of it’s gone.”
A total of 32,500 people came to LUMA in 2024 (numbers were capped at 12,000 per night), through those windy, rainy and eerily warm nights. They stood in awe, gasped and applauded, pushed strollers along lit trails, drank mulled wine, and danced to the DJs in the forest. 2024 was officially the ninth LUMA, marking nine years of Tāhuna Queenstown’s early winter transformation from ‘Adventure Capital of New Zealand’ to ‘Arts, Music, and Creative Light & Sound Phenomenon of Aotearoa’. Sadly, however, the much-anticipated 10th anniversary of LUMA is now on hold. Put it down to exponential cost rises, economic downturn, and the reality of mounting any event which relies on significant sponsorship and an audience saying “yes” to purchasing a ticket (admittedly only the equivalent of the price of a Fergburger with fries).
It was a tough call. For the key creatives who began the LUMA Arts Trust 10 years ago, it’s not the end of the dream, but a huge disappointment. They stress that LUMA is not over, simply on hold. A pause also means a bit of a rest, however, because LUMA can take its toll.
We need your help
READ MORE
TIM BUCKLEY (LEFT) AND DUNCAN FORSYTH ON THE JOB. PHOTO: PETA CAREY
Just two weeks after the LUMA 2024, Tim Buckley – graphic designer and clever and good bugger generally – is tired. Exhausted. Asked why he does it, why he and his mates ever kicked off LUMA in the first place, he pauses. “The Why? You’ll get a different answer every month of the year. It is fun, in a slightly mad, masochistic way.” Though he finally admits, “it’s very much for the love of it, and has been right from the beginning. The initial brief, when we started – that there was no creative or cultural arts outlet in Queenstown, no festival. We set out to change that – to start small, to have something we could have artistic control over and be our own curators, which we’ve achieved.”
Tim’s one of the original five who came up with this fantastical idea and called it LUMA. Five locals, five creatives – Tim, Simon, Luke Baldock, Dan Move and Duncan Forsyth. The genesis for LUMA dates to the 1990s and their shared appreciation of dance music, many in the team being DJs, all part of a thriving nocturnal events scene. Back then, dance spaces were rare, or expensive. These guys went off the beaten path, literally, off into the wilderness, creating overnight events, Halloween specials, invitation only, 4WD access, bring a tent, light shows accompanying the speakers pushing out sounds, generators working away in the background.
Each of them worked away quietly, almost underground, to create an alternative culture in Tāhuna Queenstown to that of the two-dimensional adventure capital. Tim and Dan curated a free zine called Source, outlining all music and arts events happening in the basin week by week. They teamed up with the guerilla drive-in crew showing movies in remote locations. Tim introduced The Front Room, moving the office furniture to the back of his design office, Fluid, to provide an intimate performance space for up-and-coming musicians. (A friend said how The Front Room was a classic example of “if you don’t like your environment, you make your own.”)
And light? Simon says it evolved from dance parties, and a fascination with technology. “We did visuals at those early events, stringing up bed sheets, wrangling a projector and putting up abstract images.” He refers to the technology as “the gluey bits – light, sound, video, all the necessary componentry. We were always thinking of crazy ways to push them together, to make something unique and interactive.”
Luke, another designer, creative and electronic music lover, imagined a large-scale light installation in Cow Lane. “Part of a crazy Cow Lane carnival,” says Simon (“which could still happen”, he adds). The team brainstormed ideas. According to Tim, “the big plan, which still exists, was for the gardens and town simultaneously, with animated graffiti walls, outdoor movies, maybe a fire-and-ice show at the ice rink. But we’re a long way off that. We’ve got a lot of ideas up our sleeve, but we’re gonna need someone to turn up with a million dollars a year, who doesn’t want to be paid back.”
Instead, in 2015, they started small with just four light installations, “two on the waterfront and two up Church Lane,” says Tim. They didn’t anticipate much of a reaction. “That first year, it was a pilot. We thought we might get a few hundred people wandering around. But we had four to five thousand people turn up.” Tim recalls how Queen’s Birthday weekend was traditionally the quietest long weekend on the calendar. “No hospitality business wanted to pay their staff double time; they used to use that weekend as a deep breath before the ski season started.”
LUMA changed all that. Because in 2016, LUMA moved into the Queenstown Gardens and as the night sky filled with beams of light, the roads into Queenstown became gridlocked with traffic, as families and visitors poured into the gardened peninsula and stood in awe. And wonder.
By now, the five creatives had realised they had to formalise the idea. LUMA was incorporated as a charity, and the team formed a company called SILO, South Island Light Orchestra (who are now called on for their expertise by other light festivals and related events).
The cast list of key characters continues. Central to the artistic mix was, and still is, Angus Muir – otherwise known as AMD (Angus Muir Design). Affectionately referred to as the “human moth”, Angus is a celebrated light artist, called on to create light installations around the world. London, Sydney, Singapore. But there is nothing precious about AMD. He appears, like any of the workers, in trademark beanie and gumboots, mucking in to fix leaks (the dinghy in the lily pond) at 7.00 am, or monitoring setups until midnight, securing rigs in the increasingly gale force winds. As he’s driving out to Mitre 10 to find rigging materials, there’s a WhatsApp exchange, in which he replies, “I’d be breaking my own rule buying fairy lights, ha ha.”
There is nothing precious about anyone in LUMA. Egos are absent. The hub of operations is the Bowling Club. It’s served as office, storeroom, kitchen, dining room, green room (more than 50 performers donning costumes and make-up every night), washing up-space (the washing and recycling of all dishes done via Sustainable Queenstown’s DISHrupt for every food and drinks outlet, sustainability being essential to the ethos of LUMA). It’s always busy, hectic, and very crowded. But not once do you hear an angry word or feel any urgency or stress. Craig Gallagher is also now also a critical member of LUMA. Described by Tim as the “circus ring leader”, Craig is pivotal to the entire infrastructure and management of the event – never phased despite whatever structure collapses or wiring is defunct. He has a grin and an answer to just about every operational issue or drama.
LUMA is no ordinary light festival. As Simon Holden explains, “a lot of light festivals are just built around installations. And you go, ‘oh there’s an installation, and there’s another one’.” Whereas LUMA is about creating experiences. We’ve carefully crafted immersive spaces layered with performance and live music. Light and sound. Tim: “There were 27 unique pieces of music written for LUMA 2024 and we pay APRA and every composer. But without having a set of rolling credits at the end, how do you congratulate those people, or reward them?” You listen to them, for starters. You walk slowly, and pause, and stand to listen to the composition in its entirety, an uplifting soundtrack to the light, to the sky and to the overall creation.
LUMA is not your standard light festival for another major reason: community involvement. In 2024, 3000 children from 15 schools contributed to LUMA’s Schools project – it’s been part of the curriculum for some years. There’s also an Emerging Artist Programme, supporting and celebrating local aspiring artists and musicians. (Despite LUMA 2025 being on hold, these two initiatives are continuing.) In the arena of the gardens known as Pixie Disco (where kids go wild under the guidance of the ever-extraordinary and ever-colourful Sunny Sky), there’s been interactive technology from Otago University and their Dodds-Wall Centre. And recently, there’s been ‘LUMABILITY’, ensuring those who would not otherwise get to LUMA, with physical or intellectual disabilities, can get to LUMA and experience the magic.
In the early days, the LUMA Arts Trust wanted the event to be free, to ensure access for all. But as funding support dimmed and costs rose skyward, they had to charge an entry fee (children were still free). But by the end of 2024, they had still only just broken even. Tim reckons the team had barely earned nine dollars an hour. (This on top of forfeiting three months of earnings from their usual lines of work. LUMA really is “for the love of it.”)
There’s the rub. No member of LUMA is ready to compromise the vision, nor the creative control. Tim explains, “we’ve always tried to change it up, so when you walk into the gardens it’s a different world to LUMA the last time you came. Our strapline for LUMA is ‘if it works, change it’. That’s always been our mantra. The key word is ‘mischievous’. The path less trod is the one we set out to walk and I don’t think anyone wants that to change.” But equally, Tim admits, LUMA has to be commercially robust. “None of the LUMA trustees are willing to put their house on the market to pay for it.”
LUMA 2026 then? It’s a blank but wide-open canvas. As Tim says, “Whatever the next iteration, it’ll be based on the same high standards of imagination and creativity, but might come in a different guise.” We can hope for the help of that LUMA-loving philanthropist with a million bucks who doesn’t want to be paid back. For now, however, all we can say is: Thank you LUMA for nine years of wonder, for the most astonishing light and sound experience. And like the annual vigil in anticipation of Aurora Australis – the Southern Lights – keep keeping an eye on the early winter sky above Tāhuna Queenstown.
Peta Carey
