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JWT London and Shell have created the world’s first floodlit football pitch which is powered by the players’ football steps. This huge project, which took 18 months, was managed by JWT Live our experiential/events team.

It was unveiled on September 10 in Morro da Mineira, a favela in the heart of a Rio de Janeiro. Earlier this month, the Martin Sorrell, the WPP Board members alongside Mike Napier, Global Communications Head for Shell, visited the Shell Football Pitch. The group met at Fundacao Dom Cabral Business School where they attended a presentation of the project before travelling to Morro da Mineira.

The favela had a largely unusable football pitch with young people forced to play in the streets. Also, because of electricity restrictions, they couldn’t play when the sun went down.

Our pioneering idea was to create a first-of-its-kind player-powered football pitch. We developed it using 200 high-tech floor tiles which Shell invested in through its LiveWire funding programme. The tiles capture kinetic energy created by the movement of the players and then convert it into electricity to power the floodlights.

This is an amazing example of some of the different kind of work JWT London is doing.

Brazilian football legend Pelé, who officially open the pitch said: “This new pitch shows the extraordinary things possible when science and sport come together”.

Starting with hosting the annual city wide favela league tournament, this pitch will help to transform the lives of the thousands of people who live in the Morro da Mineira community. The JWT team were left in no doubt of this when they made their first site visit and a group of children ran towards them screaming “are you the ones going to fix our pitch?”

This activity is part of the Shell #makethefuture programme, which is designed to engage a wider audience into the energy conversation and inspire a younger generation to consider and get involved with science.