More than a million Christmas lights will illuminate Petrie Plaza this festive season, as a Canberra resident teams up with SIDs and Kids to break a Guinness world record.
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Forrest resident David Richards has been lighting up Christmas time in the ACT for four years with his enormous and creative light shows, which attracted more than 70,000 people last year.
He was awarded the Guinness world record for most Christmas lights on a residential property in 2011 and last year, but now he's chasing another record: largest LED installation in the world.
The record is held by Shurtan, Uzbekistan, which created a picture with 1,012,840 LED lights in 2012.
As in previous years, all the proceeds from the lighting display will go to the charity SIDS and Kids, which made $140,000 in gold coin donations at Mr Richard's last display.
Mr Richards said Guinness World Records had approved his attempt and he would travel to China in August to collect hundreds of thousands of lights for the display.
He said the lights would run down Petrie Plaza to the Canberra merry-go-round, which will feature 200,000 lights itself, and across two large canopies.
"It'll be like a light show that sort of dances to music and flows to music," he said. "We've already started programming. There's about 800 channels so imagine 800 individual strings of lights that you can turn on or off, fade up or fade down, or make dance to the music."
Mr Richards said there would be a full-sized Santa Claus and a full-sized snowman made out of LED lights.
SIDS and Kids ACT chief executive Nathalie Maconachie said she hoped the event would raise awareness about her organisation and the services it provided.
"It's important to remind people that they shouldn't be complacent," she said. "A lot of people think that SIDS is a fixed problem and it's not. It's really important that people follow safe-sleep practices and we do the education for that.
"But also we want to say to people who have experienced loss that they can come to us and we will help them."
Ms Maconachie said it was looking for sponsors to help build the display.
Canberra CBD Limited chief executive Jane Easthope, whose organisation was a principal sponsor for the event, said there would be multiple events around the display, including camels parades and a night market.
"As they light the lights on the Christmas tree this year, the lights for SIDs and Kids will go on ... we're also running a night market up here with traders, which will be on from 6pm til late, that includes food. And during the day there'll be a charity market with a Christmas theme," she said.
Christmas in the City will run from November 28 to December 28.
