How RELICS: A New World Rises Uses Lighting to Transform LEGO Builds

RELICS: A New World Rises is not just an exhibition you walk through. It is an experience you slowly uncover. Inside forgotten objects from our past sit entire LEGO® civilisations imagining a future where humanity has moved on, but creativity lives on in miniature form.

Photo provided by RELICS: A New World Rises Exhibition in Sydney, Australia, 2025

Each display invites you to look closer. Peer inside old machines, discarded technology and everyday items transformed into detailed LEGO® worlds filled with story, character and humour. The builds are dense, layered and packed with moments that reward curiosity.

Then the lights come on

Light My Bricks play a crucial role in how these LEGO® builds are experienced. At RELICS, our lighting components have been carefully integrated to guide the viewer through each scene, providing precise points of light that enhance depth without overwhelming the build.

Without lighting, you admire the build. With lighting, you feel like you are stepping into its world.

Photo provided by RELICS: A New World Rises Exhibition in Sydney, Australia, 2025

The beauty of these LEGO® creations lies in their storytelling. Every relic holds a narrative about survival, adaptation and imagination. Lighting enhances that storytelling by revealing what matters most. A glowing workshop tucked into a corner. A softly lit street that suggests life continues inside. A hidden detail you only notice once the light catches it just right.

Photo provided by RELICS: A New World Rises Exhibition in Sydney, Australia, 2025

Photo provided by RELICS: A New World Rises Exhibition in Sydney, Australia, 2025

Lighting does not steal the spotlight. It supports it. When done well, it blends seamlessly into the build, becoming part of the story rather than a distraction. At RELICS, the lights help slow visitors down, encouraging them to explore, linger and discover more with every glance.

A Conversation With RELICS Creator, Jackson Harvey

We spoke with Jackson Harvey, creator behind RELICS: A New World Rises, about storytelling, scale and how lighting elevates LEGO® builds.

Q. Your builds are packed with detail. How important is lighting in showing that detail?

Jackson Harvey:

We like to pack our builds full of as much intricacy as possible. Using lighting is an incredibly valuable tool in highlighting areas of high detail, like mechanical greebling, shopfront windows, and small interior spaces that would otherwise be lost. It's also a really useful way to embellish the storytelling and inject a sense of life into the builds, to highlight scenes, characters and architecture.

Q. How did lighting change the way visitors interacted with the exhibition?

Jackson Harvey:

The lighting we use helps us craft our visitors' experiences by directing their attention to the areas of detail and focal points of storytelling. Sometimes, we'll bury a scene right in the back of an interior build, and lighting can be a really useful way to highlight these kinds of hidden easter eggs that might otherwise be lost in a large-scale build. LEGO®, by its nature, is a very static medium and we try every trick in the book to make our builds feel alive. Lighting plays a huge role in how our visitors experience this sense of liveliness.

Q. How early in the design process do you think about lighting?

Jackson Harvey:

We think about the lighting from the very beginning of each build, which informs much of our design process. The lights are used to highlight key focal points of the storytelling, which is built into each design from the start. We'll use larger, brighter lights to illuminate interior spaces, and smaller FX LEDs to bring the details to life, like fireplaces, electrical sparks, or flashing signs. One of our aims is to keep the wiring accessible, so we build in channels and secret compartments to maintain access to FX boards and splitters.

Q. What advice would you give builders who want to experiment with lighting in their own LEGO® builds?

Jackson Harvey:

For any builders wanting to experiment with lighting in their LEGO® builds, we'd suggest looking at how lights are used in the real world and how you could use LEGO® lighting to recreate these effects. Lighting is all around us, and the more lights you can apply in a considered way, the more your builds feel alive. Even small details, like the blue glow of an open fridge, a flickering fireplace, or a moody street lamp, can really elevate the atmosphere of a MOC, so we try to build in as much as possible to bring our builds to life.

Q. What makes lighting feel like part of the build rather than an add-on?

Jackson Harvey:

The best way to make lighting feel like a real part of the build, rather than an after-thought, is to think about it from the beginning and build it into the structure. We've found that the best effects can be achieved when you can shield the LEDs directly, which creates more natural effects. You can achieve this by building them into transparent bricks to create more diffused effects, or having them hidden so they aren't shining directly into your eyeballs (those things can be very bright!) and of course - make sure the wires are well-hidden! There are plenty of clever ways you can employ to hide the lights while still keeping them accessible. We've found technic bricks, headlamp bricks and profile bricks to work really well.

Q. What do you hope visitors take away from RELICS?

Jackson Harvey:

We hope that visitors to RELICS come away from their experience feeling inspired to be creative, and hopefully seeing LEGO® in a new light as an artistic medium. One of our aims is to really push the boundaries of what the system is capable of. However, once you look past the creative, colourful world of our LEGO® communities, there are some more serious environmental undertones to our work that aim to provoke conversation about the mass-produced things that we use, recycle and throw away. By considering a post-human future of waste and decay, we hope to make difficult conversations about the future more accessible.

Where LEGO® Builds Become Experiences

RELICS: A New World Rises shows what happens when imagination, craftsmanship and lighting work together. These LEGO® builds already tell powerful stories, but lighting reveals the moments that make those stories unforgettable.

That is why our lighting components are designed to be flexible, modular and builder-friendly. From lighting and expansion to connection cables and power solutions, each piece is made to support creativity rather than limit it. The goal is not to overpower a LEGO® build but to enhance its story just like the worlds inside RELICS.

If exhibitions like RELICS inspire you to experiment with lighting in your own LEGO® builds, our range of lighting kits and DIY components makes it easy to start small or go all in. Whether you are lighting a single detail or an entire scene, the right lighting helps bring imagination out of the shadows.

Because sometimes the most important part of a build is not what you add next but what you choose to illuminate.