{"id":831659,"date":"2026-03-17T11:33:21","date_gmt":"2026-03-17T11:33:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/831659\/"},"modified":"2026-03-17T11:33:21","modified_gmt":"2026-03-17T11:33:21","slug":"neonblack-illuminates-wales-investment-summit-with-ayrton-tpi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/831659\/","title":{"rendered":"NeonBlack illuminates Wales Investment Summit with Ayrton \u2014 TPi"},"content":{"rendered":"

Award-winning live design and creative production studio, NeonBlack, chose a rig of Ayrton Rivale Profiles as the workhorse lighting fixtures to light the recent Wales Investment Summit 2025 which, presided over by First Minister for Wales, Eluned Morgan MS, took place on 30 November at the International Conference Centre of Wales in Newport (ICCW).<\/strong><\/p>\n

Nearly 350 delegates from 29 countries attended this key event, hosted by the Welsh government with the express aim of encouraging high-value international investment into Wales. Looking to create a different, more exciting experience from the traditional conference dinner, the Welsh Government approached NeonBlack directly, requesting them to conjure up a little magic that would make the evening truly memorable. NeonBlack\u2019s answer was to create an immersive experience for the dinner with a significant wow factor that combined creative video work and lighting.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe ICCW is a giant of a conference room which essentially gave us a huge blank canvas to work with,\u201d said Dom Smith, founder and creative director at NeonBlack. \u201cTo do something truly immersive you need to surround people with an environment, so we designed and put together a 360\u00b0 immersive dining space with projection on all four sides of the room.\u201d<\/p>\n

NeonBlack was commissioned to make a 7-minute video promoting Wales as an investment opportunity for these projection surfaces, which Paul Johnson (PJ), NeonBlack\u2019s Design Director, story-boarded and worked on with Cardiff-based videographer Paul Nicholls of Bait Studio using a variety of software including Unreal and After Effects. \u201cMy idea was to take people on a visual tour of every corner of Wales and give them a taste of the potential that exists in this wonderful country,\u201d said PJ.<\/p>\n

NeonBlack\u2019s remit also included giving each section of the dinner a different, dynamic location: \u201cWhen the delegates entered the room, they essentially felt like they were on the top of Mount Snowdon,\u201d said PJ. \u201cWe built this environment by mapping 3D photography onto the video projection. To the rear of the mountain we layered in the sky, added shooting stars, introduced the aurora borealis etc, so the whole room was slowly drifting and changing around the gathered delegates. This backdrop then gave way to the 7-minute video, introduced by the event\u2019s compere, Alex Jones, after which Eluned Morgan made her entrance through a projected image of the Tardis (this is Wales after all!) which had been circling the room!<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter Eluned\u2019s presentation, the evening moved on to the dinner, at which point we used images of the newly refurbished dining hall at Caerphilly Castle as the basis for a new environment: the whole room transformed into this backdrop, which was illuminated by wall sconces \u2018lit\u2019 by animated characters. \u2018Dai the Dragon\u2019 then flew past the \u2018windows\u2019 of the room before entering and igniting the fire in the fireplace. He continued to make appearances as part of the room environment throughout the dinner. He was very popular! After dinner, the room setting returned to the aurora borealis on top of the mountain as cabaret singers, Welsh in the West End, entertained the audience.\u201d<\/p>\n

NeonBlack\u2019s rich lighting design sat over the top of the projected environment, illuminating the dinner and adding the immersive element to the video. \u201cIt\u2019s not enough to simply have video projection, you need to go a lot deeper to make something truly immersive,\u201d said Smith. \u201cLayering lighting cues over the top of the video adds a sense of drama as well as creating an ambience for the dinner. We were looking for lighting products to help us do that and the natural choice was Ayrton\u2019s Rivale Profile. We used 64 in the rig for the main event, plus another 16 in the themed foyer and dining room approach, and also for aerial beamwork outside the front entrance to set the mood as delegates entered the building. The IP65 rating was essential for these fixtures to withstand the typical Welsh weather!<\/p>\n

\u201cRivale was the only choice for a production of this nature as it is such a multi-functional fixture and so easy to use. It transitions seamlessly between key and effects lighting, has a great output and flat field, lovely colours and is great on skin tones. It\u2019s also nice and compact which is a great advantage in that environment. It was a total no-brainer!\u201d<\/p>\n

NeonBlack has enjoyed a good working relationship with the Welsh Government for some time. \u201cWe\u2019ve had the honour of working with the Welsh Government before and they brought us on board for the Summit because they were looking for something a little out of the ordinary, which I think we have delivered,\u201d said Smith.<\/p>\n

According to the Welsh Government website, \u201cIn the twelve months prior to the Summit, Wales attracted a staggering \u00a34.6bn in inward investment\u2026This was surpassed by announcements on the day which promised a total of \u00a316bn towards job creation and capital investment projects in coming years.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPrivately, they\u2019ve commented to us that part of the success of the investment was because the dinner was so unusual that it is still being talked about,\u201d concluded Smith. \u201cSo, I guess we did our job!\u201d<\/p>\n

www.neonblack.design<\/a><\/p>\n

www.baitstudio.com<\/a><\/p>\n

www.ayrton.eu<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Award-winning live design and creative production studio, NeonBlack, chose a rig of Ayrton Rivale Profiles as the workhorse…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":831660,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5010],"tags":[238631,238632,748,4884,238633,16,15,1764],"class_list":["post-831659","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wales","tag-ayrton","tag-bait-studio","tag-britain","tag-great-britain","tag-neonblack","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-wales"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116244303423273602","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/831659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=831659"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/831659\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/831660"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=831659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=831659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=831659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}