| 7 Helping to bring stories to life Toulouse shapes and creates fabulous interactive experiences all with the aim to bring a vision, a story, a feeling to life. Toulouse Ltd REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT Sue Russell A peek at Wellington-based Lighting Design and Technology Integration company, Toulouse’s website gives viewers the impression the company carries seriously creative bones. The website unfolds like a piece of theatre ‘lights, camera, action’ in a lively entertaining way and captures the essence of what Toulouse has claimed its own. Best described as bringing story-telling to life by creating meaningful encounters for viewers, Toulouse shapes and creates fabulous interactive experiences all with the aim to bring a vision, a story, a feeling to life. Managing Director, Marc Simpson, cut his teeth in theatre lighting design production for opera, ballet and musicals, and its with those experiences that he’s been able to gather a team of like-minded visual adventurers around him. Today, the culmination of their expertise can be seen in spaces such as Te Papa, where turn-key lighting and digital interactivity enable visitors to the Scale of Our War exhibition to really feel what conditions were like for those fighting in WW1. “We were involved at Te Papa right from the outset. That was over 25 years ago and we invested more than a decade developing the technologies that have helped make this a world-class engaging national museum.” Other recent New Zealand projects include the All Blacks Experience at Sky City Centre in Auckland, Weta Workshop Unleashed, also in Auckland, and Manea Tapuwae ā Nuku – Footprints of Kupe, in the Hokianga. While some projects cross the table somewhat formed, more often than not - and the space Toulouse most excels in - is design and build from scratch, helping clients navigate into visual form what they want to convey to viewers. Projects, by their nature, are long-term commitments straddling engagement over several years – not for the faint hearted! “It takes time to talk through what the non-negotiable things are that a client won’t let go of and to balance budget to this, is all about building trust and relationship.” For Marc its extraordinarily satisfying to have created form and spaces that have simply given joy to millions of people. “It’s a wonderful feeling to give back, to create something where nothing existed before; something that will help people understand a story better and come away with feelings to carry forward.” Currently projects in China and France are keeping the team gainfully busy, while development at Matamata’s Hobbiton, along with two sites on the West Coast are also in full swing. At any one time Toulouse has on average of 20-40 projects on the go at various stages of coming to life, ranging from the small regional Museum telephone or touch-screen to tell the story, to projects spanning buildings and significant spaces. Marc laments the fact that the creatives space in New Zealand is such a small one. He would welcome funding and public support for creative projects to bolster the industry and would allow other operatives capable of taking on the kind of projects which Toulouse does.
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