Written by Cianna Jay // Graphic by Ben Evans
This year’s Holiday of Lights will include a projection mapping light display on the White County Courthouse, making Searcy the first city in Arkansas to use this technology for their holiday decorations.
Professor of theatre Britton Lynn, who has worked with projection design for Harding productions and teaches the projection design class, is in charge of designing content that will be displayed on the courthouse and coordinating where each element will go.
The light projection will be on the east side of the courthouse, with the two projectors on the roof of First Security Bank. The display will include four distinct light shows on a loop. This set-up allows viewers to watch one light show, walk around downtown or visit other light displays in Searcy, then come back to the courthouse and experience a different light show. Lynn said this way, Searcy can provide an evening of entertainment and encourage visitors to shop in local places.
“We really do want to drive people downtown,” Lynn said. “We want to keep people engaged with the square as much as we can, with the shops that are on the square, with the vendors that might be around … So it’s just going to be kind of a place that we can anchor some of the holiday festivities that are going to happen this year.”
Mayor Mat Faulkner approached Lynn about creating the projection mapping for the courthouse. Projection mapping has been a dream of Faulkner’s for as long as Lynn has known him.
When Faulkner became mayor, he saw projection mapping as a way of increasing downtown engagement while solving a current problem with decorating the courthouse, Lynn said.
Since White County Courthouse is on the National Register of Historic Places, the Holiday of Lights committee needed to find a way to decorate the building without damaging it. Lynn said they are using the projectors this year as a test program to see whether or not this approach will work. Because it is a test program, Lynn said audiences shouldn’t expect the complexity of projection mapping at places like Walt Disney World, but the display will still provide a sense of spectacle.
“It’s going to be a fun experience,” Lynn said. “Every time that I work on it, I’m getting more and more excited about sharing it with everyone and I’m getting more and more confident that it’s going to be something that’s really kind of eye-popping.”
Southern Living magazine selected Searcy as one of the cutest Christmas towns for an article they will publish next year. Holiday of Lights committee chair Tonia Hale said Searcy offers a Christmas activity every weekend in December and has one of the biggest Christmas parades in Arkansas.
“[Southern Living] chose to come to our facilities and to our town to see what we were talking about and how our Christmas decorations and the Holiday of Lights are,” Hale said. “They’re big, they’re huge.”
Hale said projection mapping will give Searcy more to showcase in the article. Hale’s co-chair, Tommy Centola, said having the projection display featured in the article will drive more people to Searcy.
“With the focus on Searcy this year, we want to really put our best foot forward and show people exactly what we can do,” Centola said. “It’s going to be so phenomenal when this happens. We’re going to be bringing in folks from all over the state, I would say.”
Lynn also said he hopes the projection display will bring in people from outside of Searcy. He said that other places in Arkansas, such as Batesville, are known for light shows that people will often travel to see. The goal of the projection display is not to compete with these other displays but to offer a different experience, Lynn said.
“Projection mapping is something that is really an audience pleaser, but it’s not something that is typically done in this area,” Lynn said. “We’re hoping that providing this unique experience that we can draw people in, and if people come, they tend to come and make an evening of it.”
The projection light show will begin Nov. 20 at 6 p.m. with the courthouse lighting ceremony. For more information about this event and future Holiday of Lights events, visit experiencesearcy.com.
