After many years Gloucester's traditional Christmas lights were universally acknowledged to be tired and in need of replacement. The City Council decided that instead of buying commercial ones they would commission an artist-designed scheme. With a development grant from the Arts Council they held a competition and invited some of Europe's most respected artists working with light to submit designs.

The chosen scheme was created by Ron Haselden, an internationally renowned British sculptor now living in France who has worked in light for many years. Ron's work can be seen in public places all over the world and he has participated in many major light festivals.

His idea for Gloucester was in part inspired by a work he had done for an international light festival in Lisbon in 2004 when he worked with a small school producing light sculptures drawn from children's images.

Ron's idea for Gloucester, 'Close to You', was chosen because he proposed to involve families and children from the city to create images celebrating Christmas, with a complementary set of coloured lights which could be switched on for Gloucester's many other festivals throughout the year. Due to technical problems these permanent lights will be introduced in 2006.

Three city centre primary schools - Kingsholm, St.Paul's and Widden - were involved in helping to design the 'Close to You' drawings. This project could not have been achieved without the hard work and inspiring drawings of the children and the enthusiasm of the staff.

A local artist, Susie Walker, worked with 160 children who produced over 200 drawings inspired by the closeness that Christmas can bring to families and friends. Every child has received a special medal for their work.

All these drawings were exhibited in an empty shop in the city centre so people could come and see what was happening.

It would have been impossible to use all the drawings and some were too complicated to be translated into the lights. Councillor Mark Hawthorne, Leader of the Council, and Councillor Martyn White, Cabinet Member for Culture Learning and Leisure, looked very carefully through all the drawings and chose the ones that they felt best illustrated the sense of Christmas.

These were sent to the artist and his engineer to be simplified so they could be made to work with 'ropelight' - the electric lighting system used for this project. The engineer made engineering drawings so that he could construct each image to the correct specification.

The centrepiece is the most complicated so the artist made a 'maquette' (little model) of that image to work from.

The city's specialist lighting engineers did a structural survey of all the wires across the main streets from which the images are suspended. Each set of wires (known as 'catenaries') was to bear two or three of the images and stars were to be hung between the larger pieces to contribute to the sense of overall cohesion. The lighting engineers also organised night-time trials over the summer to make sure that the idea would work practically as well as artistically.

The lights were switched on in November 2005 by 6 year-old Ewan Trehearne, who had drawn the centrepiece Santa.