Meeting of Lighting-related Organisations and Letter to IYL2015 and UNESCO

Meeting summary and Agreements:
The meeting included a fairly tight program: an introduction to the petition #LightUp2015, the discussion of a letter to be sent to UNESCO for recognition of lighting design Especially in the International Year of Light (IYL2015) and of the activities that we will achieve in 2015 together, internationally, or on national basis.
IALD has informed us of the results already obtained in the dialogue with the executive committee of IYL2015 ( (they consider positively expanding the thematic areas of the International Year of Light and Light-based Technologies to Light in the Built Environment). The importance of writing to the Steering Committee could then decay, but we felt important emphasize the presence of a larger community, so today we sent a Letter of introduction to UNESCO and IYL 2015 as shared among all organizations.
During the meeting we also discussed how each organization can contribute to IYL2015, since everyone agreed being a tremendous opportunity for all professionals. Mainly two groups of ideas seemed successful:
- Perform the activities that are carried on normally by everyone, on a national basis, and propose them to be counted among the celebrations of IYL2015. If these activities are replicable elsewhere, the format may be shared with other organizations.
- Achieving a global event, with low implementation costs, which can easily be shared on social media and generate engagement to raise public awareness.
Letter contents:
The letter communicates the results of our meeting, specifies the role of each professional figure, the areas in which we are involved, in addition to the names of all associations, groups, universities and the media who participated. We also asked to know how are composed the national committees, already established.
“We believe that the first and most important step we can take is to work closely with the national committees in our respective countries to support and collaborate on IYL 2015 activities.
By this collaboration, we seek to foster acknowledgement by the general public as well as by the specialists of the importance of light and lighting as a key factor to improve the wellbeing of people in diverse built environments, and the need to incorporate the expertise and knowledge of lighting professionals in the development of projects at all levels.”
Conclusions:
Now we just have to wait for the reply of the Steering Committee, while organizing, as individuals and associations to celebrate the IYL2015, for the Recognition of the Lighting Design profession especially in the International Year of Light 2015 - #LightUp2015