South Africa - Almost 100 of ADJ’s LED-powered wash fixtures were deployed by MGG Productions to illuminate Cape Town’s DHL Stadium. The project was designed to produce a vibrant backdrop – visible across the city – for the Earthshot Prize ceremony, which was held in Africa for the first time in 2024. Despite inclement weather, the ADJ fixtures performed flawlessly, lighting the stadium’s distinctive façade in a vibrant green to highlight the event’s environmental mission.
Inspired by President John F. Kennedy’s ‘Moonshot’ challenge in 1962 to land a man on the moon within a decade, the Earthshot Prize was launched by Prince William in 2020 to search for the most innovative solutions to the world’s greatest environmental challenges. Every year over the course of this decade, five solutions with the best chance of helping to achieve one of five ‘Earthshots’ are being awarded £1m each to scale their solutions, with all 15 of each year’s finalists receiving tailored support from a global alliance of partners. The five Earthshots are to Protect and Restore Nature; Clean our Air; Revive our Oceans; Build a Waste-Free World; and Fix our Climate.
In 2024, the Earthshot Prize was hosted on the African continent for the first time. Taking place across five days of landmark events, Earthshot Week spotlighted groundbreaking environmental solutions. It brought together world-leading innovators, investors and philanthropists to drive forward the restoration and protection of the planet and culminated in the Earthshot Prize Awards in Cape Town. Hosted by Emmy, Grammy, and Tony Award winner Billy Porter and award-winning television presenter Bonang Matheba, the Award ceremony featured some of the world’s biggest musicians, artists, athletes, and advocates. The event highlighted and celebrated the extraordinary work of all 15 finalists before the five £1m winners were unveiled.
Located across the street from the marquee erected to host the awards event, it was decided that Cape Town’s landmark DHL Stadium should be illuminated in green to provide a backdrop to the event while also drawing attention to the Earthshot initiative. The responsibility for delivering this ambitious undertaking fell to local company MGG Productions, which has a strong track record of delivering technical services at the stadium, working on behalf of specialist sporting event agency Moonsport.
MGG Productions’ project manager for the event was Konstant De Vos. He specified 48 of ADJ’s 12P HEX IP LED PAR cans and 48 of the 32 HEX Panel IP LED wash fixtures for the project, although admits he had limited expectations for their ability to light up such a large building.
“I’ll be honest, I’d never used these fixtures before this event and I had in my head a particular idea of what a PAR can can do,” explains Konstant, “so I wasn’t expecting that much. We also had some large moving head beam fixtures on the job, which we were planning to use to do the bulk of the work, with the ADJ fixtures just filling in from the bottom. However, when we got on site and realised how powerful the HEX fixtures are, the plan ended up reversed. Almost all of the stadium lighting was covered by the ADJ fixtures, with the moving heads just serving to fill in a few little gaps.”
“We were really blown away by what can be achieved with a panel or PAR can on the floor!” comments Konstant. “Both the 12P HEX IP and 32 HEX Panel IP are extremely punchy fixtures that are capable of covering a very large area with vibrant colour. The IP65 rating is also a real advantage. The weather in Cape Town is super unpredictable and we did have rain while we were onsite. The perimeter of the stadium was 1,200m, so setting up and cabling was a logistical challenge in itself. Going around and bagging the fixtures for the rain would just not have been practical.
“We didn’t have a single issue with any of the almost 100 fixtures and found them to be extremely easy to work with,” explains Konstant. “Our original plan was to use DMX control, but in the end we ran a bit tight on time so just set the fixtures in standalone mode. The onboard menu is easy to use, so we had them set up in the static green colour in no time at all. Since both fixtures use the same LEDs, we also found it easy to get an even colour wash all around the building, with nice blending from fixture to fixture.
“Our only challenge was getting the angles right, as you couldn’t get a feel for the spread when you were up close where the fixtures were located, because of the scale of the building. So, we sent someone out in a car with a two-way radio to see what it looked like from a distance, and they gave instructions to the guys on the ground to get the positioning right. After a couple of passes around we achieved a really nice even coverage that looked spectacular from every side of the stadium.”
The striking green illumination of Cape Town’s DHL Stadium became a defining visual for the 2024 Earthshot Prize celebrations, visible from across the city and perfectly echoing the initiative’s eco-conscious vision.
