Willow Creek Church Marks 40 Years with Event at Chicago’s United Center

Significant milestones deserve memorable celebrations. For most organizations, a rented ballroom or restaurant space is sufficient. The game changes when the organization is among the nation’s largest and well-known mega churches. In the case of the South Barrington, IL-based Willow Creek Community Church, its 40th anniversary celebration called for a much larger space — Chicago’s 20,000 capacity United Center arena. The goal was to deliver the same immersive visual experience that congregants had come to expect from the church’s worship services.

Christmas comes very early each year for LD Tomm Gillies. His design company, SeeKing Productions, has been collaborating with “Christmas on the Potomac” (COTP), featuring ICE! since 2010. The annual event at the Gaylord National Harbor Marriot in Washington DC returned this year, opening on Nov. 21, 2015.

Every winter, we see videos of some amazing large-scale Christmas light shows that take place. We see houses adorned with a million sparkling lights. Projection mapping on houses mixed with choreographed lighting. I’ve seen live animals, moving lights and trucks decked out with lights. But the Granddaddy of all of them takes place every year at Fred Loya’s house and grounds in El Paso, Texas.

Once every two years, 19 city blocks — 68 acres — of the Dallas Arts District is transformed into a visual wonderland of projected, digitized, pixilated and coherent light. The Dallas Aurora Festival 2015, billed as “an immersive free public art event of light, video and sound,” it serves as a showcase for “New Media” artists now coming of age in today’s art world. Urban structures are illuminated with high-powered digital projectors, and reflecting pools come to life in a cascading display of lasers. Coupled with the endless line of food trucks and over 60,000 attendees, this seems like a pretty good way to spend a Friday evening in Dallas, Texas.

As the old New England saying goes, “if you don’t like the weather, wait a minute.” So while the earth-toned Christmas of 2015 came on the heels of a freakish warm spell, it would be a mistake to assume that a complex touring production during the month of December will always be met with clear roads and balmy, shirt-sleeves weather.