About

Freelance for over 30 years, Jonathan Dawson-Butterworth has worked on nearly every type of event from theatre to TV, corporate to concert, art exhibition to advertising and much more besides. In the process he has been involved in illuminating a myriad of objects, places and people across the world.

He first started lighting at school, progressing on to working with local bands, theatre and small events and has since been involved with some of the largest events in the world.

In addition to lighting design, he has designed lighting fixtures and supplied product development input to several manufacturers

Jonathan has extensive experience covering all areas of lighting, from planning and design to every aspect of creating and realising a lighting system.

Mainly working in live entertainment, including live broadcasts and corporate events, with forays into recorded television, advertising, film and promotional video, as lighting director, designer, programmer and operator, he has also been involved in several architectural projects. Alongside his interests in renewable energy and in accordance with his concerns for sustainability and minimising environmental damage, he has supplied advice on methods to improve efficiency of lighting systems including applying appropriate focussing techniques, changing lamp and fixture types. He encourages manufacturers, suppliers, productions and others to operate in a sustainable manner.

He is often consulted from across the world for advice on tours and other major projects.

Over the years, Jonathan has supplied his boundary pushing and innovative abilities in many places with many world firsts and adoption of early technologies including:-

Creation of the lighting data network for one of the first large scale systems to use video to LED lighting control.

Planning and creation of a large scale data network for a one-off event utilising early fibre optic networking.

Programming and operating the lighting and media server on the 2nd unit for the multi award winning hit film Gravity. This involved some innovative uses of L.E.D. panels as light sources, bespoke C.G.I. and robot systems.

Alongside his freelance activities, Jonathan set up Lighting Productions Limited which specialised in supplying lighting control solutions. The company has supplied equipment which has been used on a variety of major tours, spectaculars, shows and events worldwide.

Jonathan has memberships of organisations including the STLD, ALPD and PLASA.