The Client

The Inception Group’s evergreen homage to the late Margaret Thatcher has undergone a major lighting upgrade at the hands of Sound Division.

Opened by the fast-growing company’s Charlie Gilkes and Duncan Stirling in April 2010, Maggie’s in Chelsea is a 1980s-inspired boutique club, named after the former British Prime Minister.

System Solution

It had been trading largely without dynamic lighting until the operators contacted David Graham’s London-based installation company, based on their sensitive lighting implementation at another heavily themed Inception venue, DISCO in Soho (since rebranded and refurbished as 1940s-themed Cahoots).

The focal point at Maggie’s is again the dance floor, now brought to life by a laser, strobe, scatter beams and four hemispheres. But the more subtle work has been applied to bringing ‘80s icons – such as Wham, Mr T, Super Mario, and Sonic The Hedgehog – to life, with a series of cleverly detailed fixtures and drivers.

This is in evidence right from the point of entry, where Sound Division has specified a pair of high-powered, IP65 weatherproof Polaris 111 LED colour-changing fixtures inside the entrance canopy, leading into 16 AVR CE3 RGB LED modules as step lights inside the club.

These are offset by the main stairwell feature – vertical wall recesses with seven CE3 RGB LED modules per side at the top and bottom of each recess, all individually controllable to produce a variety of colour-change and chase patterns that guide patrons on their journey down the stairway to be faced by the portrait of Maggie herself, now even more vivid thanks to an ultra-slim LED warm white picture light.

Elsewhere, Sound Division has used subtle LED ribbon tape to highlight tables and bar, with UV panels throwing light onto the special painted fluorescent mural behind the bar. Meanwhile, further LED effects glow behind the seating, and sophisticated LED mood effects befit the upmarket club’s upmarket clientele. Over the bar itself, the company has replaced the existing fittings with five mini LED 30W RGB Par stage cans.

But it is the dance floor that has really been transformed. Accounting for the low ceiling, Sound Division has installed four strategically placed Chauvet Hemisphere centrepieces – much favoured by Duncan Stirling himself for their ‘Sputnik’ multi-coloured spikes of changing light. These interact with six Chauvet 300 LED scanners, installed snugly into the ceiling’s recessed edges. A Pulsar strobe and Chauvet Arena haze machine further enhance the impact along with another icon of the 80s, a Kvant ATOM 800 compact 800mW fast scanning multi-coloured laser.

Says David Graham, “The ATOM 800 is an amazing piece of kit – powerful and ultra-reliable. The big difference today is that the cost of lasers has reduced substantially, while the heavy use of LED not only gives the club a low-maintenance, low-running-cost solution but almost infinite lamp life. The Chauvet products have also proved to be excellent performers – equally reliable and pitched at budget conscious price levels that impress clients.”

Maggie’s also benefits from the fact that general manager Maxwell Stirling is a dab hand at operating the ShowCad Artiste 512 PC controller, linked to a 17in ELO touch screen PC, as he accesses the library of effects programmed by Sound Division. “There is no comparison between this new lighting rig and what we had previously,” he remarks. “This is already providing extremely popular with our clientele.”

David Graham adds, “The Inception Group are always right on the ball and extremely professional to deal with while Max himself is passionate about lighting and highly skilled at syncing the lightshow to the music.”

The Result