Configuring Light/Staging the Social: Dialogues between the social sciences and lighting practices

Light is a material through which we organize social space; light is the infrastructure of everyday modern life and without it much of what we do and take for granted would not be possible:for example, if we only had natural light, invevitably nightime activities would be severely reduced with a significant impact on the forms of social life that can be sustained. The benefits of our technological manipulation of artificial light are immense: the contemporary city's economy critically depends upon it, heritage and creative industries require it (the lighting of great public buildings an important part of city branding, for example) and much of what constitutes the civil governance of cities (crime, safety and security) takes light as the fundemental basic requirement. Moreover, as part of creative industry, manufacture and maintenance, lighting is a major economic sector.

At the same time, the ecological costs of our energy consumption are also hotly debated and are consequently framed within political discourse and public policy, as new lighting technologies and EU regulations attempt to create sustainable energies. In addition, light (and its absence - darkness) are critical to our health, as for example in the regulation of sleep, mood and well-being and can entail significant health reactions if not properly regulated (as highlighted by the case of SAD and by increasing concerns with light pollution.

These debates and issues are the broader social context for our seminar series, 'Configuring Light/Staging the Social', which aims to forge an intergrated dialogue between social sciences, design, architecture and urban planning focused on this most fundamental feature of social life. Surprising, given the importance of light as outlined above, there has been little integrated thinking and research on light. While it is a central concern to technicians, architects, engineers or designers and some policy makers, it has largely been ignored or little researched within the social sciences. While it would be seem important to draw academic attention to this most critical social material, practitioners' technical and design knowledge would also benefit from a more rigorous understanding of the social and cultural aspects and impact of their practice. However, thus far, little dialogue has taken place across these different disciplines and between academics and practitioners.

Our seminar series aims to both address the gap in social science knowledge about light and put if firmly on the academic agenda within disciplines such as sociology, geography and anthropology, for example; while at the same time to bridge the divide between academic knolwedge and the technical and design knowledge of light engineers, architects and designers and urban planners. This dialogue between social science and practitioners should have considerable impact: our aim is to produce both knowledges and methodologies for better researching the ways in which light is configured and the roles it plays in structuring social life and it is envisaged that these new ways of thinking and working with light will directly impact on those practitioners in indusry and urban planning.

Many professionals and institutions are actively involved in 'configuring light', and collectively have an enormous impact on a range of social and economic issues, most of which we hope to capture in our seminar topics, such as environmental costs, impacts on health and well-being, risk and safety, design of urban and domestic spaces, urban regulation and governance. Therefore impacting light-relate professionals has a considerable multiplier effect throughout the social field.

At the same time, these professionals have voiced a clear desire and need for dialogues with social scientists. Professional lighting practices involve core social assumptions and beliefs (eg, about the relationship between lighting and urban safety) that are known to be insufficiently evidence-based and requiring more social science informed knowledge and methods. At the same time, dialogues with social scientists, particularly in a multidisciplinary context, will generate new research questions, agendas, approaches and methodological innovations. Finally, we stress the significant research capacity within the lighting sectors themselves, particularly amongst manufacturers and designers. Hence, a significant seminar impact will be generating research collaborations across the academic-practitioner divide. We also note that dialogue between the four user constituencies we identify below is not always extensive; considerable social and economic impact may come from simply encouraging discussions amongst the beneficiaries within a social science context.

Given the seminar focus on 'configuring light', we have targeted several kinds of non-academic constituencies that comprise significant groups of active beneficiaries:

1. Lighting designers, architects and engineers: we have secured the support and participation of two of the most important practices in this sector: the lighting design group of Ove Arup and the Spiers and Major design company. We will also be inviting smaller lighting and industrial practices such as JLK DS and FourSquare, with whom we already work on joint research.

2. Urban planners and regulators: We have secured the active participation of LUCI (an international network that brings together urban lighting professionals in 65 cities).

3. Manufacturers: We will be inviting researchers from major manufacturers, both directly and through their membership of other organizations (eg, Theatrum Mundi, NYU/LSE, which has already confirmed their participation, includes major lighting researchers from the corporate sector, such as Philips)

4. Professionals working in environmental and energy policy: we are currently in negotiations with EC departments charged with drafting light and energy policy.

As indicated in our 'Pathways to Impact' statement, we aim to mobilize social science and user dialogue for greater impact firstly through the choice of seminar topics: we have consulted widely to ensure that the topics are recognised matters of concern and debate amongst practitioners. This should allow use to demonstrate and develop the role of social science knowledges, approaches and methods in addressing the key practical and professional concerns of non-academics, as well as positively developing new questions and agendas that can have real impact on their practices of configuring light.

We will support this approach outside the seminars through dissemination strategies (for which we are also seeking administrative support but will also be supported through our location in the LSE Cities Programme, which is widely networked): eg, we will be circulating 'new agenda' documents from each seminar which summarise and promote new questions, agendas and approaches to the topic of that seminar; we will also use the website to circulate such documents, as well as working papers and new literature. Above all we know that web-hosted audio-visual presentations of key seminar discussions can have wide impact on practitioners.