The Closing Ceremony of the 2024 WorldSkills Competition was staged in the 60,000-capacity Parc Olympique Lyonnais (OL Stadium) at the Eurexpo complex, Lyon, France, with Paris-based creative agency Concept K providing full scenography, lighting design, laser effects, video and art direction plus show calling.

Concept K’s artistic director Frédéric “Aldo” Fayard was the Closing Ceremony’s show director, working closely on the lighting side with Theo Cannone who programmed and took on a lighting DoP role, ensuring that everything worked on camera for the broadcast and livestream channels.

The lighting specification included 72 x iFORTE LTX and 150 x MegaPointe moving lights among other fixtures, chosen for their power and versatility.

The Concept K team collaborated closely with event production company, La Franco European Image for client WorldSkills France, the national organising committee for this year’s event. WorldSkills is an international charity dedicated to the development of vocational skills. It organises related world and national championships as well as hosts conferences and events.

The 4-hour Closing Ceremony show was divided into distinctive sequences all requiring dynamic lighting and celebrating the achievements of 1,400 young competitors attending from nearly 70 countries and regions.

The 360° scenography drove the design and delivery of the spectacular show, an area in which Concept K has high-profile experience, including for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. The set was designed by Simon Fouillet, and all technical elements were crafted to work from multiple angles including the 360° lighting design, where front lighting on one side would work as back-lighting for the other, and vice versa – an idea more complicated to execute than it might sound!

The iFORTE LTXs were positioned on six lighting trusses rigged on the stadium roof to surround the scenery elements, while the MegaPointes were located all around the upper tier levels of the stands, with another layer down around the pitch perimeter at floor level.

The iFORTE LTXs were used for essential key lighting, while the MegaPointes provided effects, general spectacle and decorative lighting, with Aldo also noting that the super-bright beams of the iFORTE LTXs “contributed massively to the drama and impact of the lighting effects,” especially during an 8-minute multimedia ‘Historic Show’ segment. “As always, MegaPointes excelled in various ways thanks to their wide range of capabilities as multi-coloured beams, blinders and aerial effects.”

Before choosing the fixtures, Aldo, Theo and the team conducted some shootouts from which they picked both fixture types for their “power, quality of light and zoom range.” He admitted that the results even exceeded their expectations and confirmed once again their belief that Robe is a trusted go-to brand for many scenarios.

MegaPointes were another reliable multifunctional choice, and widely available as the design needed multiples of the same light source.

The Robe products, plus other lights on the rig – approximately 400 in total – were all controlled via a fully grandMA3 system. Concept K has embraced ‘Mode 3’ since 2022 and in this case its flexibility and power enabled them to go to site armed with an extensive amount of accurate programming work completed during pre-viz sessions.

The stadium’s two permanent 11.5m-wide 16:9 LED screens were augmented with the addition of four panoramic screens (10.2m x 3.6m) plus 12 x ‘feedback’ screens on the field for the MCs and stage managers co-ordinating the 8 different broadcasting streams.

Challenges abounded, the biggest of which was creating good and consistent lighting for the 21 x cameras relaying the worldwide broadcast and streaming – with such limited time available for the team on site.

The get-in commenced on the Tuesday to start rigging lights for a show on Sunday and some superlative teamwork, great communications as well as imagination and consummate professionalism ensured incredible results, both for those experiencing the show live, and the millions catching it on camera.

Lighting, audio and rigging equipment were supplied to the event by Novelty’s Lyon branch.

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