Speakers

City partners

Fréderic Durand, Head of the Studies Department, Urban Lighting Department, City of Lyon

Frédéric Durand joined the public lighting department of the City of Lyon in 2000 after several experiences in the energy department. For more than twenty years, he has been learning about and adapting  urban lighting technologies through experimentation and measurement. Present from the start of the LUCI network, he became involved in the LUCI Light and Art Commission and then participated in the Art & Culture Pillar working group.

Leena Pälli, Senior Advisor, Cultural Services, City of Oulu

Leena Pälli is currently working as Senior Advisor in the City of Oulu Cultural Services. She has a BA from the Stockholm University, Art History as major and MFA from the Sibelius Academy, Arts management as a major. She has worked as General Manager for symphony orchestras, held positions as a producer within classical music in Finnish top organizations and worked as specialist in several organizations in Finland. In Oulu, she was also a member of the Oulu2026 European Cultural Capital bidding team that won the title. In her spare time, she spends time together with her two Burmese cats, reads books and tries to deal with her garden.

Matteo Scainelli, Cultural Activities Service, European Cultural Networks and Projects, City of Turin

Matteo Scainelli works at the Cultural Activities Service of the City of Turin, in the Art and Design working group. Among other things, he has collaborated on the public program of the Luci d’Artista festival, which consists of educational activities and workshops that, through the educational departments of six museums in the city, involve thousands of students with their communities.

Keynote

Dr. Cara Courage, Culture and Place Consultant-Director

Dr Cara Courage is a globally renowned placemaking leader, cultural and creative sector consultant-director and researcher, named in the top 10 of place-thinkers worldwide and a ‘strategy angel’ for the arts sector.

Her passion for and dedication to people and place has led her to specialise in practices that are socially-engaged, community-led, and embedded in place, whethera team, a city park, a national museum or a rural town high street, doing this as a consultant, practitioner, researcher and writer.

Her most recent project is ‘Trauma-Informed Placemaking’, with Dr Anita McKeown, a research platform and forthcoming textbook (Routledge, 2023). Cara is Editor and Convenor of The Routledge Handbook of Placemaking (Routledge, 2021); Co-Editor of Creative Placemaking and Beyond (Routledge, 2018); and author of Arts in Place: The Arts, the Urban and Social Practice (Routledge, 2017).

LAiPS Talks

Éric Lefebvre, Executive Director, Quartier des Spectacles Partnership Montréal

Éric Lefebvre is the Executive Director of the Quartier des Spectacles Partnership since September 2020. From 2013 to 2020, he was the Partnership’s Director of Development. During his seven years in that position, he took charge of numerous initiatives related to international development, business model diversification and shared processes, all with the aim of meeting the challenges of the digital revolution, including major data-sharing projects. He has implemented export and co-production strategies, and has been a key player in efforts to support performance venues. He has mobilized the partners and built strong ties with multiple communities, from business and the public sector to the cultural and digital industries. He is well known as an intrapreneur who turns sharing and mobilization into tools for innovation and economic development.

Titia Ex, Artist

Artist Titia Ex creates a choreography in a space where art, technology and the receptive surroundings meet. Every environment has its own character, function and users. Her visual light & media sculptures immerse with their dynamic, mobile forms and interactive characters. In the course of light and dark, day and night, they reflect related changes of mood and create a poetic echo, adding a new layer of meaning.

Titia Ex won several awards, like The LAMP Award, The CODA Award and the People’s Choice Award from LUCI. Her works, objects and installations have been exhibited worldwide, such as in London, New York, Tokyo, Gwangju, Jerusalem, Istanbul and represented in collections of institutions like the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Donnell Library New York; Philips Museum Eindhoven; Ministry of Foreign Affairs and various private collections.

Andrea Bocco, Professor at Interuniversity Department of Regional and Urban Studies and Planning, Politecnico di Torino

Andrea Bocco, Ph.D., is Professor of Architectural Technology at the Inter-University Department of Urban Studies and Planning of the Politecnico di Torino (DIST). He teaches about Low-Impact technology.
He has been working on participatory urban regeneration, local development and community hubs. He founded (1999) and directed (until 2009) the San Salvario Local Development Agency (Torino).
His publications deal with, among other topics, the analysis of the built environment; construction with natural, low-impact materials and technologies; and the assessment of the environmental impact of buildings and human behaviour. He is the author or co-author of publications such as Bernard Rudofsky. A Humane Designer (2003), Werner Schmidt, Architekt. Ökologie, Handwerk, Erfindung (2013), The Environmental Impact of Sieben Linden Ecovillage (2019), Vegetarian Architecture. Case studies on building and nature (2020) as well as the editor of Yona Friedman’s Roofs. Local materials, simple technology, sophisticated ideas (2020).

Anna Pellegrino, Associate Professor at Department of Energy, Politecnico di Torino

Anna Pellegrino holds a Master degree in architecture and a Ph.D. in Energetics, showcasing her dedication to the fields of sustainable architecture and energy efficiency.

As an Associate Professor of Building Physics at Politecnico di Torino, she carries out her activity as both an educator and a researcher. Her work primarily revolves around the fascinating realm of lighting engineering, spanning various aspects such as the interplay between light and human performance and well-being, light and energy, encompassing lighting and control technologies and their practical applications. She is equally passionate about the role of lighting in enhancing the cultural heritage and in general the indoor and outdoor built environments.

Anna Pellegrino’s expertise is recognized internationally as she currently collaborates within the CIE (International Commission for Illumination) Division 3, the IEA (International Energy Agency) Task 70 and, in AIDI (Italian Association of Illumination).

Moderators

Jessica Férey, Deputy Director, LUCI Association

Jessica is French/American with a multidisciplinary background that includes arts management, art history, and theatre directing. She is a passionate arts-lover with particular commitments to innovative connections between people and culture and public space. As Deputy Director of LUCI she is in charge of network stewardship and development as well as events strategy. She is the project manager for the Creative Europe LAiPS project (Light & Art in Public Spaces) and oversees LUCI’s activities under the Art & Culture pillar, including the Light Festival Working Group and all things relating to creative lighting. 

Previously, she was Deputy Director of the Global Cultural Districts Network and prior to that worked at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. She received a Master’s in Arts Management at American University in Washington DC, where her research focused on gender equity in arts leadership. 

Dr. Marco Bevolo, Founder, Marco Bevolo Consulting

Dr. Bevolo, Member of the Board Studies and Adjunct Professor, Design Futures, at World University of Design, is currently an international consultant in Foresight, Futures, and Strategic Design and Researcher and Lecturer at a leading University of Applied Sciences, The Netherlands. In 1999-2009, he was a Director at Philips Design headquarters in the Netherlands. Today, he is Advisory Board Member and Principal for Research Management and Academic Affairs at ISISUF, Milan, the art and design foundation programming FuturDome, Milan, Italy. He is also a member of the scientific advisory board of the ENLIGHTENme project, of which LUCI is a partner.

He earned his PhD on the role of design in generating urban futures at the Graduate School, Faculty of Behavioral and Social Sciences, Tilburg University and received the Emerald Literati and two ESOMAR Best Conference Paper Awards. He lives and works in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, and in Turin, Italy.

Conference rappoteur

Dr. James Doeser

James is a freelance researcher, writer and consultant based in London. He works with cultural organisations, artists and agencies worldwide to help them find and deploy high-quality research in the pursuit of greater impact, larger and more diverse audiences, and sustainable business models. His many project reports have influenced the sector’s approach to soft power, governance, education, advocacy, research and evaluation. His commentary on cultural policy has appeared in The Stage and Art Newspaper. In the early 2010s he spent some years in the research team at Arts Council England. He has a background in archaeology.