On the evening of May 30, the town of Lexington gathered once again at Depot Square for Illuminate Heritage: LightScapes of Lexington, a striking projection mapping show created by students from the Youth STEAM Initiative.
Building on the earlier success of the 2025 LexLux Illumination Night and the 2026 Munroe Arts Illumination Night, LightScapes of Lexington brought our Illuminate Heritage initiative to a grander scale by transforming the Lexington History Museum at The Depot into a living canvas. We are grateful to Lexington History Museums, our site and community partner, for hosting the event and helping make this student-created show possible. Blending light, animation, music, and real community imagery, the show celebrated Lexington’s legacy. By anchoring the projection mapping at a central historical site, the event deepened public appreciation for citizen heroes, honoring both important historical figures and the everyday residents who continue to shape our community today.
To create the show, students from the Youth STEAM Initiative invited public participation through a community nomination link, allowing residents to submit local heroes for a chance to appear in the projection mapping video. Students also gathered photos and videos from across Lexington from 32 organizations, including schools, volunteer groups, youth service organizations, families, neighbors, and cultural groups that share traditions and connect people across backgrounds. By incorporating these real images into carefully crafted animations, the show demonstrated that heroism is not limited to famous figures or extraordinary moments but can be found in the everyday actions of people who step forward to serve their community.
Using creativity, technology, and countless volunteer hours, the Youth STEAM Initiative transformed community photos into a digital projection mapping experience that highlighted the citizen heroes of Lexington. “Through 108 photos and stories shared by residents and organizations across Lexington, we celebrate the people who quietly make our town stronger, kinder, and more connected,” said Dr. Wei Ding, the founder of the Youth STEAM Initiative. “Tonight’s experience was created by local students, but it belongs to the entire community.”
Cristina Burwell, Executive Director of the Munroe Center for the Arts, said at the opening of the projection mapping show, “What is very exciting is when you have ideas, and they can grow and develop. And the community is not only part of the creativity, but also the beneficiaries of what they get to see, which is very rewarding.”
More than a visual performance, LightScapes of Lexington invited viewers to reflect on a shared question: What role can I play in serving and shaping my community? The projection explored what makes a hero by tracing a visual journey from a quiet moment of need to the decision to act, to moments of service and leadership, and finally to the lasting ripple effect those actions create throughout the community. –” In every community, there are people who quietly make a difference.”
Rather than celebrating only a select few, the show reminded viewers that heroism is powerful and important, but not rare. By combining art, technology, history, and civic reflection, Illuminate Heritage: LightScapes of Lexington offered residents a meaningful shared experience and showed that history is not only something preserved from the past but a continuous story shaped by the actions of everyday people today.
