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ALD Fellow Francis Reid dies at age 86.

Francis was a founding member of the Association of Lighting Designers and played a key role in establishing the practice of stage lighting design and the role of Lighting Designer in the UK.

Francis Reid received the CITT/ICTS Honorary Membership Award in 2010. Mr. Reid’s influence on the past generation of Canadian theatre practitioners was quite profound and most deserving of this recognition. While based in the UK, Francis has enjoyed an astounding international career over the past fifty years in roles as lighting designer, theatre manager, and pioneering consultant on lighting technology and venue design. His passion as both educator and author is evident through the abundance of publications he has penned, as well as by his distinguished teaching resume which spans several renowned theatre training institutions across several continents.

His ties to the development of Canadian theatre professionals is most significant, considering that the most contiguous tenure of his career was his role as a visiting lecturer at the National Theatre School that spanned nearly thirty years - hence influencing hundreds of current professionals. Several of the Canadian lighting designers that he has instructed include Sholem Dolgoy, Louise Guinand, Lesley Wilkinson and Spike Lyne, to name but a few. They have also become regarded educators in their own right. This has ensured that the design principles he established will continue to influence future generations of Canadian theatre practitioners. A great many of those who did not receive the direct benefit of his tutelage will have been ‘enlightened’ by his quintessential text ‘The Stage Lighting Handbook’.