LESSONS LEARNT FROM LUMIERE
Lumiere was an outstanding success to all those who visited, organised and took
part. However, it was clear that this was due to tremendous efforts, often at the last
minute, by those responsible for ensuring it was ready to take place.
At a meeting on the 12 January, 2010, those involved produced a ‘lessons learnt’ list.
This is set out below and will be used to help shape our approach to events in the
future.
Transport and Congestion • Accuracy in estimating visitor numbers will come with more experience.
• More overflow car parking will need to be available for future events. Explore
options.
• Transport to the Botanical Gardens from City Centre needed better signing and
greater promotion.
• Extra buses required in Service and Park and Ride fleet. Greater pre-event
promotion of bus services required.
• More signage for all bus services.
Crowd Control
• Better information on switch on times, location of installations.
• Consideration of one way routes for visitors.
• Location of installations – avoid creating potential bottle necks.
• Investigate closure of City Centre/part to traffic.
Health and Safety • More time required at the beginning to plan properly. Look at pre-planning
tabletop exercise.
• Set Project Team up prior to SAG to deal with all emerging issues, with clear lead
contact from main Agencies. Make SAG job easy.
• Engineering assessments take time and this needs to be built in.
• When time is short, all team members need to be flexible enough to act quickly
and deliver.
Legal
• Need to bottom contractual issues early and investigate risks based on
understanding that Cultural events do contain risk.
Communications • Lumiere promoted well, in Durham and North-East.
• Need greater information on operational issues (see above).
Future Events • Develop programme of future events into a single plan and prepare for each in
good time.
Ian Thompson
Corporate Director of Regeneration and Economic Development IJT/CAS/25.1.10