Enchanted Woodland at Syon Park

Syon Park is back this year with its Enchanted Woodlands installation trail. Now in it's seventh year, the event is evidence of a growing trend among heritage locations opening their doors to artists and designers. The advancements and growing popularity of projection technology also means many more landlords with buildings big enough to screen films on are finding new ways to throw light on their stately homes (pun intended).

Syon Park's Enchanted Woodland is a large scale light, sound and projection trail that blends close up installations with epic choreographed displays, often with a wonderful sense of humour.

The design is a collaboration between Syon Park themselves and Yes Events with the woodland entrance being a yearly design challenge for the Park's own gardening department. Needless to say there are some creative minds among the Syon team.

Particular highlights of the 1.15 mile walk is the installation on one of the park's largest trees. The trunk is so embedded that it has a fence surround and for the Enchanted Woodland the hole is coated in camo netting through which seeps dry ice and the sound of a very large mythical creature ready to pounce on any brave child who wanders too close. The sign leading up to it does a particularly effective propaganda job.

Another treat on the route is the Light Rocket Launcher. Where upon pressing a button you cast a stream of light in the direction of a cluster of trees, there is then a perfectly timed explosion in the distance in a visual crescendo of colour.

After visiting a disappointing York Illuminations this year (where it seemed interactivity and atmosphere were secondary considerations to celebrity budgets and an un-syncopated aesthetic), it was wonderful to see the designers of the Enchanted Woodland use the given presence of the natural ingredients to create magical elements. Whether in the form of lasers dancing on bull rushes or tiny fairies hovering into view on screens hidden between tree trunks, they suggest a story to each gnarled tree, monument or cove along the walk. 

Their success was in working sound and light into their given environment amplifying the pre-existing atmosphere and character rather than plonking some expensive projections onto a wall of no such relevance. 

The walk uses the natural beauty of the 200 acre estate to its best advantage. The booming classical music and cinematic laser display in the green house felt like something out of The Matrix (the good one). Even the reflection the up-lit trees cast on the mirror surface of the interrupting stream was mesmerizing and too beautiful for an iphone camera to do justice, so you'll just have to see it for yourselves.

The Enchanted Woodland is on from Friday the 16th of November to Sunday the 2nd of Dec - Friday, Saturday and Sundays - from 5pm to 9pm (last entries 8pm) . Tickets are £7 for Adults and £3 for the little ones. Syon Park is the London home for the Duke of Northumberland and it's in Brentford, in case you wanted to know.

The walk is one of those 'lose the feeling in your feet' kinda ones, but there is mulled wine and really good cake in the cafe at the end which more than makes up for it.