Drone shows for light festivals

Where we come from: light art

Drone Stories came out of Studio DRIFT, the art studio of Ralph Nauta and Lonneke Gordijn. Our first work was not a commercial show but a light artwork: Franchise Freedom, a flock of starlings made of light. We have flown it over Art Basel Miami, Burning Man and Central Park, and indoors in Venice during the Biennale. At LUMA Arles, 600 drones brought Van Gogh's Starry Night back to the sky. Light festivals curate artists; we fly as artists.

Noor Riyadh: 3,000 drones at the world's largest light art festival

At Noor Riyadh we flew Desert Swarm: 3,000 drones moving as one swarm over the desert, a new chapter of Franchise Freedom, and a new record for the largest drone light show. It showed what a drone show can do inside a light festival: become the work that everybody talks about, and the reason people come.

The festivals we would like to fly for

The great light festivals already draw millions of people: Vivid Sydney welcomed more than three million in its record year; the Fête des Lumières fills Lyon every December; Kobe Luminarie, Noor Riyadh and Berlin's Festival of Lights bring millions into the streets; and Amsterdam Light Festival, GLOW Eindhoven, Lumiere in the UK, Signal in Prague and i Light Singapore turn their cities into galleries after dark. Amsterdam is our home city. For each of them, a drone show can be the moment that ties the route together.

Ticketed shows we build together

A drone show does not have to come out of your art budget. We can build it together as a ticketed show: you bring the city, the site and the audience; we bring the work, the fleet, the permits and the flight. The tickets pay for the show.

• A low ticket price, so everyone can come. A light festival is for the whole city, and the show should be too: families, students, tourists.
• Several shows a night. In Cannes we flew three shows each evening, four nights in a row. More shows means more people, shorter queues and a lower price per ticket.
• A work made for your festival. Every show has a story: your city, your theme of the year, the artists in your programme.
• One partner for the hard parts. Airspace approval, safety zone, weather window, crowd plan: we handle them with your team and the city.

How a partnership starts

Tell us your festival, the dates and the sites you are thinking of. Within a day you hear what could fly there, how many shows a night make sense, and how we would build the ticketing with you. Get in touch, or see our festival shows and our shows for cities.