Christchurch's Illuminate light show grows to 80,000 visitors

It's been a bright year for Illuminate.

Hosted in the Christchurch Botanical Gardens at Hagley Park, Illuminate's fifth year featured thousands of lights alongside food and rides across three weeks.

Event Hire owner and operator Phil Anderson said their goal was to attract over 70,000 people in Christchurch this year, and they were stoked with the outcome of just over 80,000.

With more nights available and a longer running date than last year, most nights sold out, especially on the weekends.

Crowd favourites from this year were the stick men, the fire performers, dinosaurs and the robot that sneezed foam and cracked jokes.

Festival goer Andrea, who attended during the second weekend, said it was her first year at Illuminate and that she was “so stoked” to be there and it was “well worth it”.

Another attendee Stacey, who remembers attending the event when it was held in Ferrymead, said she loved everything, but her favourite part of the night was the blow-up dinosaurs and the carnival rides. 

Illuminate was originally started to fill a gap in the winter event calendar, Anderson said.

Event Hire found that lighting resonated well with people, especially outdoors and in natural spaces.

Keeping Illuminate appealing every year has involved constant adaptation to improve the customer experience.

The layout was redesigned this year with a 300-metre-long path running in the opposite direction from last year, and over a 40-foot container's worth of new lighting installations.

Now in its fifth year, Anderson said the future goal for Illuminate is to "constantly keep evolving it", and to find more interactive pieces, because "anything interactive people love".