The inaugural Light Justice NOW Awards, organized by program partners Light Justice and designing lighting, were presented in May at LightFair 2025 in a ceremony hosted by Randy Reid, publisher of designing lighting and EdisonReport, and myself, Edward Bartholomew, co-founder of Light Justice. Randy was inspired by the IES/Light Justice Interior Symposium and approached us with the idea to create the Light Justice NOW awards. These awards are a significant milestone in expanding the lighting design conversation to include projects and initiatives that directly impact under-resourced and marginalized communities.
The projects selected for recognition by the Light Justice NOW judges demonstrate the powerful social impact of lighting through their aesthetic value and stakeholder engagement. It is a clear affirmation of our mission: “Light Justice is the practice of planning, designing, implementing, and investing in good lighting and beneficial darkness for historically neglected and under-resourced communities through a process of stakeholder respect and engagement.” These lighting design projects overcame technical, logistical, and budgetary challenges while partnering with community members to transform nighttime environments into spaces of dignity, value, and beauty.
Every lighting design award program celebrates the core values of our industry. Most lighting awards recognize the design team for the beauty, complexity, composition, integration, energy efficiency, sustainability, and/or controllability that the project demonstrates. These projects are typically commissioned by well-resourced, powerful, privileged clients who can afford cutting-edge lighting technologies along with the design resources needed to implement them. The lighting industry has rarely addressed the inequities inherent in these award-winning projects.
“What would it look like to celebrate projects that directly impact communities that historically have the least access to our expertise and talent?”
Our industry has traditionally paid very little attention to the social impact of lighting, despite being aware of the benefits that good lighting brings to spaces and communities. The industry recognizes that lighting significantly enhances a project’s worth by highlighting activities, places, and structures that communities value. Lighting designers, as invited experts on the application of light, work with clients to decide what is illuminated thoughtfully and what—and who—is ignored, and potentially devalued. What would it look like to celebrate projects that directly impact communities that historically have the least access to our expertise and talent? The Light Justice NOW Awards sought, this year, to bring this question to the forefront of our industry.
Submissions for the awards are open to anyone in the lighting design industry, including manufacturers and their representatives, distributors, contractors, architects, and lighting designers. Projects are evaluated on how clearly they communicate their purpose, process, and outcomes through narrative and visuals. Strong emphasis is placed on meaningful stakeholder engagement throughout the lighting design process, as well as on how successfully the project overcame constraints through thoughtful lighting strategies. Judges also assess the project’s impact on visual comfort, quality of light, maintenance, access to daylight, and support for under-resourced areas, including back-of-house spaces. Evidence of success, such as testimonials, press coverage, or community bulletins, strengthens an entry. Bonus points are awarded for projects that align with Light Justice principles—engagement, education, empowerment, and deployment—or enhance a community’s economic value.
Two award-winning lighting projects celebrate darkness as a vital cultural and environmental resource. In Ireland, the St. Patrick’s Church project designed by Dark Source, a firm led by designer Kerem Asfuroglu, reduced light pollution by 40%, aligning with DarkSky principles to restore the town’s nighttime character and honor its sacred architecture. The María Elena project, designed by a team at DIAV Lighting + Ciluz consisting of designers Paulina Villalobos, Ximena Muñoz, and Bárbara Córdoba, crafted subtle lighting that emphasizes the shadows of a historically significant mining town, transforming darkness into a space for memory and storytelling. Rather than erasing the dark, both projects embrace it—using light sparingly to enhance, not overwhelm. Through both creative restraint and community engagement, they affirm that darkness holds meaning, identity, and beauty deserving of protection and reverence.
Community-engaged design centers the lived experiences and needs of residents, transforming spaces into environments of dignity, safety, and pride. At Charles J. Ziehler Playground in Philadelphia, designed by Miller Design Group and its principal, Robin Miller, neighbors directly informed the project’s lighting priorities, calling for improved visibility on the sports fields and safer nighttime access. One of the most popular responses was the desire for sports field lighting so that parents no longer needed to use their automobile headlights to illuminate the field for practice and games. The design team translated this feedback into creative, cost-effective solutions, such as warm pathway lights, decorative pendants, and dimmable fixtures, proving that high-quality lighting can and should be accessible to everyone, regardless of budget or zip code.
In Boston, The Possible Zone, designed by Lam Partners designers Dan Weissman and Maggie Golden, invited local youth into the design process, including the fabrication of custom pendants showcased throughout the building. This both supported hands-on learning and reinforced the center’s mission to empower young entrepreneurs. In Chicago, Leslie North and Gloria Paz Arroyo of Aurora Lighting Design developed lighting at The ARK to elevate the experience of a kosher food pantry and community rooms, combining warmth, function, and identity in spaces that support people at particularly vulnerable moments. This included creating a lighting controls strategy that respected special Shabbat needs. These projects demonstrate that lighting, when shaped by the communities it serves, does more than illuminate—lighting can respect culture, build equity, and turn everyday environments into special places of opportunity, inspiration, and belonging.
The following community-centered lighting projects demonstrate how participatory design can empower neighborhoods through education, cultural expression, and co-creation. In Sparkling Indigo, Flux Studios with principal Glenn Shrum, the Neighborhood Design Center, and the residents of Baltimore’s Station North collaborated in a co-design workshop to reimagine the nighttime identity of Blue Light Junction, a natural dye studio. Their ideas informed a luminous façade that celebrates local heritage and inspires neighboring properties to consider similar interventions. The project also included interpretive signage and a guided tour during Placemaking Week, turning public light art into a tool for learning and making visual connections across diverse areas of the district at night.
Urban Braids, designed by Leni Schwendinger of Light Projects, transformed Newkirk Plaza with vibrant rope-light “braids,” woven and installed by local Brooklyn, NY, residents. Through workshops and collaborative fabrication, community members learned about lighting materials and design while physically shaping their shared space. The braids, symbolic of the neighborhood’s rich Afro-Caribbean culture, now form whimsical portals and vibrant connectors that enhance night-time use and community pride.
San Francisco’s Sixth Street Revitalization and Tenderloin Fence Illumination projects, designed by Sol Light Studio Principal Neha Sivaprasad, extensively engaged local businesses, artists, and residents in an instructive, collaborative process to reframe neglected urban spaces through creative lighting solutions. Lighting murals and façades—not just sidewalks—resulted in enhanced safety, visibility, and cultural storytelling while overcoming significant logistical and funding challenges. Together, these projects illustrate how inclusive lighting design educates and empowers communities. By inviting people to shape their environments, they foster a sense of ownership, uplift neighborhood identity, and demonstrate light’s potential as a catalyst for civic engagement and renewal.
The projects recognized this year by the Light Justice NOW Awards demonstrated the technical rigor and innovation critical to delivering quality lighting within limited budgets. Even further, they required the designers to step outside their hermetic digital comfort zones and engage directly with the impacted occupants and community members. This involves negotiation and mediation and requires careful listening to people’s nighttime aspirations and fears. Light and darkness are freighted with cultural meaning that can be forgotten in the world of illuminance levels, uniformity ratios, and sustainability strategies. Real people, rather than imagined occupants, were invited to participate in the development of the lighting designs that directly impact them.
During the awards panel discussion, each of the award winners shared how the communities had expressed enthusiastic appreciation for the results of these projects. That is the ultimate goal of thoughtful design: to make a meaningful impact by utilizing our talents, thereby improving the quality of life for those who do not have direct access to design resources.
Visit www.lightjustice.org for detailed case studies of these award-winning projects. And, if your IES Section is interested in expanding your lighting awards program to include projects that are beautiful and impactful, we would be happy to share our Community Impact criteria with you.
Edward Bartholomew, Member IES, IALD, LEED AP, is the principal of Bartholomew Lighting, a Black-owned design consultancy based in Cambridge, MA. He has over 30 years of experience designing sustainable, inspiring, and award-winning architectural lighting.
