Hunkered down in the beautiful countryside of the south of France is a pleasant environment, and German-born French-based lighting designer Andreas will be the first to admit that! Normally busy with rental company Giglam, he’s also keeping himself super-occupied whilst in isolation …

Robe: Where are you right now?

Andreas: In a little village in the south of France called Bagnols-en-Foret.

Robe: How are you spending time whilst isolating / on lockdown?

Andreas: I take care of all my elderly neighbours – making pizzas and fresh bread and also going shopping for them.

I have started planting vegetables but not sure if this is gonna be such a big success!

Otherwise, I am participating in an initiative from Jean Michel Jouane with French training centre LC Formation.

We do daily free Facebook live training on different topics like grandMA 2 and 3, ChamSys consoles, Sketchup, WYSIWYG, Vectorworks, ArKaos MediaMaster, etc.

I think it is a good way to show some solidarity and share some knowledge with all the other people who finally have time to increase their knowledge!

And finally, with Vincent Rautureau from Giglam we are thinking about a way to make the show go on and we launched the ElectrHoME virtual festival.

Robe: What’s the most creative thing you’re able to do whilst in isolation?

Andreas: With Vincent, we have spent a lot of time on the phone thinking about a way to show solidarity with our industry, and most importantly with the crews and freelancers.

That’s when we came up with this virtual festival that we have designed in 3D and we want to invite all kinds of artists to join our project in order to create the Greatest Party that never happened in real life (a unique edition hopefully!)

Instead of just signing petitions or complaining about our situation we would like to launch a huge virtual festival where people can and will actually donate for the cancelled festivals and of course for the crews.

The idea is that every artist will choose the festival or cause they want to support, and all the money will go to that event.

I don’t think it is the right time to try to make a business from this, but to show the world what technical crews can still produce … even without being on a dusty festival site and maybe this can help festivals to still be there next year.

Robe: Are you looking after anyone else during the Covid-19 crisis? Like neighbours or others in the family?

Andreas: Yes … as above I do have a few elderly neighbours who I look after, and I’m here with my girlfriend who is enjoying seeing me more helping her in the garden … rather than being behind a laptop!

Robe: Has anyone particularly inspired you since this crisis started?

Andreas: Bruno Garros (Robe France)’s wife Valerie started to produce masks to help people.

And as I cannot heal anyone or have any talent with a sewing machine, I try to find a different way to be helpful for the people I work with all year round.

Robe: What has been your favourite book / movie / Netflix or TV series / viral video / Games / music?

Andreas: “Killing Eve” (British black comedy-drama spy thriller television series) and “Casa de Papel” (popular, nail-biting Netflix action series AKA “Money Heist” covering two ingenious and daring bank heists).

Robe: What’s the first thing you’d like to do when we are through this crisis?

Andreas: Disconnect from my laptop, stop calling people and see them instead!

Robe: Own question / answer / message of solidarity or something you’d like to say?

Andreas: Try to stay active, even if it’s hard – I believe it helps to stop negative thoughts!