Now in its eighth year, this award-winning initiative is a collaboration between a group of local school children with modelmakers and designers from Squire & Partners. The annual workshop challenges the children to make their own design which are then transformed into bespoke lights.
In 2024, Squire & Partners invited a group of Year 6 students from Sudbourne School to take on this challenge, working around the theme, ‘Wonderland’. Continuing from 2023, in 2024, The Southbank Centre also commissioned Squire & Partners to produce seven lights to create their own Winter Windows display for the Queen Elizabeth Hall. These have been designed by the Year 6 children at Oasis Academy Johanna in Waterloo.
The final designs, which include a ghost, a globe in an ice cream cone, a tulip and a grinning Cheshire Cat smile will illuminate the Southbank and Brixton respectively over the winter months, connecting two sites and two schools located in the Borough of Lambeth.
Team Squire & Partners modelshop team, Sudbourne School, Oasis Academy Johanna, Southbank Centre
The Workshop
Over the course of two workshops, both schools were challenged to create interactive shapes associated with the theme of ‘Wonderland’, inspired by the local Brixton House Theatre’s Winter 2024 performance of Alice in Wonderland – a modern retelling of the weird and wonderful classical story against a Brixton backdrop.
Workshops were held Downstairs at The Department Store to test and work up a final design into one continuous line which could be woven onto a metal grid to create the chosen shape.
Armed with coloured pens, string and pipe cleaners, the children progressed their designs and presented their final idea.
The Winning Designs
A panel of judges from Squire & Partners and Southbank Centre selected a series of designs, combining drawings where possible to maximise the number of designs included in the display.
Squire & Partners’ model makers weaved 360 LED Neon Flex through wire mesh frames to transform the sketches into physical lights, exactly as drawn. The modelshop team then installs the finished lights at the Southbank Centre and the Department Store
