The City of Stratford’s award-winning annual winter festival, Lights On, features interactive installations designed by students in the Global Business and Digital Arts (GBDA) program at the Stratford School of Interaction Design and Business. Their work will be featured alongside international exhibits.
46 students from the course GBDA 412, Special Topics in Digital Culture, were challenged to create large-scale interactive media art pieces for the Lights On festival. Inspired by the Thirteen Grandmother Moons stories, an Indigenous knowledge tradition, the students created installations that explore light as a symbol of knowledge, community, and continuity.
From December 12 to January 18, three student-designed installations from the class will be featured within Destination Stratford’s Welcome Centre:
- Healing Currents is an interactive projection installation that transforms reflective prompts into radiant digital sucker fish - symbolizing collective healing through light and renewal.
- Ripples Through Time uses interactive digital windows and body-motion tracking to represent how human relationships with water have shifted across generations.
- When We Come Together is an interactive light installation that explores reconciliation as an ongoing and cyclical process shaped by movement, presence, and collective participation.
“It is such an incredible honour for our students to be given the opportunity to showcase their creative talent and critical design skills in a festival of this magnitude,” said David Han, an instructor at the Stratford School who led the course.
“This is the second year we’ve collaborated with UWaterloo to create student light art displays, and I continue to be amazed at their creativity and brilliance,” said Zac Gribble, Executive Director of Destination Stratford.
When We Come Together team member presenting design concepts to community members
Learn more about the collaboration and the ideas behind the installations, or visit Lights On from December 12, 2025 to January 18, 2026, Thursdays to Sundays, 5 PM to 10 PM.