Fridley High School Alum Noah Craft Seeks to Blog Around the World About Lighting

You have until Sunday, August 7 to help Fridley High School (FHS) Alum Noah Craft travel the world and blog about Lighting through the Philips Light World Tour contest. 

Craft has been garnering support from the Fridley community to make to make it into the top 10 candidates for the contest (competitors get to the top 10 through votes, and then one person is chosen as the person who gets to travel the world.) Craft has been Tweeting, Facebooking and calling for support from his friends and community both locally and through contacts he’s made in other parts of the country.

Since graduating from FHS in 2007, Craft has made his way in the world as a theater lighting designer, first while studying at University of Minnesota-Duluth, and now in his rather gypsy-like existence traveling between Minnesota and the East coast doing various gigs. Though he travels a lot, he still works closely with the FHS theater department as a consultant and designer.

Philips Lighting, a large lighting company, is sending an urban planner, architect or lighting designer around the world for 3 months this fall to visit and share perspectives on inspirational lighting.

“Needless to say, I must make a stab at this opportunity,” Craft said.

 
He recalled he initially heard about the contest through industry contacts, and thought it would be the perfect opportunity because he's at a point in his life where he can travel- he said he doesn't feel tied down.

He lived in Duluth for 4 years, and spent several months in Chataqua Institute, in western New York this summer. 

After he finished high school, Craft had no idea what he wanted to do, but he discovered he really liked lighting design and technical theater. FHS has a well equipped space, he said, and he learned a lot from his "inspirational teacher," Dan Wold, the technical director.

 “I owe my enthusiasm to him,” Craft says. “He really has a passion for it.” 

Taylor Barker, who also went to FHS and currently works on FHS productions, said Craft has been a person students can turn to when they need help learning how to set up equipment and just helping out with productions.

“He’s about as experienced as they come,” Barker said.  

Craft said his philosophy about what makes a good theater lighting design is that it needs to serve the production.

“The lighting needs to further the emotions involved,” he said. 

Craft loves lighting because it is such a unique medium.

“It’s intangible,” he said. “Lighting is invisible.”

He also said he likes it because it is such a practical medium.

 “It’s so necessarily in our everyday life, and yet it can be used in such a way that it’s a beautiful art form… It’s a subtle and humble art form,” Craft concluded.  

When he first heard about the Light World Tour contest, he didn’t think he was qualified. But he decided the opportunity was "too cool" to pass up saying “I think the experience itself will be a good theme to blog about."