Imagined, Designed and Built in Leeds, UK – returning to California, USA

Wind back to this time in 2018. Can you remember where you were and what you were doing? Our team remember January 2018 vividly. They were very busy putting the finishing touches to our immersive installation Spectra, before its maiden voyage to California.

Spectra was imagined, designed and manufactured by our team here in Leeds, UK.  For those of you who have been lucky(?) enough to experience both, you’ll agree that Leeds on a wintry December day couldn’t be much more different to a warm day under the Californian sun.

In the bitter winter of 2017/18, NEWSUBSTANCE’s team was working out of an aircraft hanger north of Leeds, building sections of the Spectra structure, testing them and then packing them into shipping crates ready to be sent to their new home on a polo field in California.  The multi-coloured perspex windows were carefully packed away alongside the steel frame, ready for their long journey across the Atlantic, through the Panama Canal and to the desert, where our team were waiting to take delivery and erect Spectra.

This project was a labour of love and its reception and welcome by the Coachella crowd and wider world has been overwhelming.

We’re proud that this was Made in Leeds and that Spectra is returning for a third year this April.

Found out more about the inspiration behind Spectra and the Road to Coachella with this short video commissioned by the festival last year: https://vimeo.com/348837812