Conferences

Every practical workshop organised by the Professional Lighting Designers' Association has a conference day at the end of the workshop week. The theme of the conference is the same as that of the workshop. Besides that, the Professional Lighitng Designers' Association offers two other annual large-scale conferences: Light Focus and Vox Juventa.

The Light Focus conference takes place once a year, usually in conjunction with a major lighting fair event, e.g. Lght + Building in Frankfurt/D, or Euroluce in Milan/I. There are different tracks for different types of professional audiences. Besides lectures there are also master classes and interactive seminars. This format is designed to have a high educational impact, since congress attendees can select lectures and seminars more purposefully to suit their level of experience and interest. The sessions cover topics of interest and relevance to all those involved in architectural lighting design and bring to light professional themes such as research techniques, the lighting design process, luminaire design and state-of-the-art technologies, professional lighting designers’ skills and services, and key types of lighting projects.

Vox Juventa is an educational conference organised by the Professional Lighting Designers' Association and designed to promote young Lighting Designers. As Lighting Design begins to take its place as a serious profession, increasingly more young people are enrolling in qualified education programmes or gaining professional training in established Lighting Design practices. The number of young Lighting Designers on the market is growing, in response to the recognition of the need for good lighting worldwide. Part of becoming a good Lighting Designer is finding out what good lighting is. Safe, functional, exciting, inspiring, ergonomic, architecturally sensitive, economically sensitive and energy-efficient – good lighting can be all these things. Another part of being a good Lighting Designer is being able to present your ideas, concepts and theories in a professional and convincing way. In their quest to become good creative Lighting Designers, students and young ongoing professionals observe, research and study many aspects of light and lighting. To give these young people the opportunity to present their findings to a specialist audience, share and exchange ideas with peers and pioneers, the Professional Lighting Designers' Association stages a yearly conference: Vox Juventa will be held at a different university every year. A Call For Speakers will be announced a few months before the conference. A jury of professional Lighting Designers will decide on the speakers. The jury will also be present at the conference and will decide on an overall best speaker, who will receive an award and prize money. Vox Juventa is designed to

• give young Lighting Designers the opportunity to research and present a paper to a professional audience
• promote closer collaboration between universities and schools of higher education offering Lighting Design
• encourage more young people to become seriously involved with light and lighting.