At last night’s BRIT Awards, held for the first time at Manchester’s Co-op Live, production designer Misty Buckley unveiled an entirely new set for the ceremony, featuring five interconnected stages animated by shifting towers and bridges.
Buckley, a multi-Emmy Award-winning designer whose credits span global tours for artists including Elton John, U2, Stormzy and Ariana Grande, as well as major ceremonies from the London 2012 Paralympics Closing Ceremony to the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games, has long helped shape the visual language of live performance. Designing for a new venue, however, brought a different set of considerations for Buckley and the team, which included executive producer Sally Wood, Sony CEO Jason Iley and director Phil Heyes.
Wallpaper* sat down with Buckley ahead of the show to discuss what it takes to create a stage for one of the UK’s biggest nights in music – and how she approached the ceremony's move to Manchester.
Five interconnected performance zones allow the ceremony to unfold fluidly, with artists moving between stages rather than returning to a single focal point
Wallpaper*: This is the first year the BRIT Awards are being staged at Co-op Live in Manchester. How did you begin approaching the design for a completely new venue?
Misty Buckley: The move to Manchester presented a real opportunity to reimagine the BRITs. When you work in the same venue year after year, there’s inevitably a degree of muscle memory; you get very familiar with the venue. Moving to Co-op Live was a genuine reset. It allowed us to step back and reconsider everything: circulation, scale, and how the audience inhabits the space. It wouldn’t work to simply copy over the BRITs format from London. It’s a very different space to the O2 as it feels incredibly intimate despite its large scale.
We all felt refreshed and excited to stage this show in Manchester – a city with an extraordinary and influential music legacy. I think the Manchester team is pretty excited to host a major international music show and we wanted to reflect that inclusivity and collaboration in the set design.
Initial sketches established the central circular stage and radiating performance platforms, positioning the audience within the action rather than around it
W*: Can you talk us through the core idea behind this year’s set? What was the starting point?
MB: We loved the idea that 'The BRITs have landed in Manchester'. That became a starting point for the whole design. Rather than a traditional end-on stage, we’ve transformed Co-op Live into a fully immersive environment; something that sits somewhere between a space station and a landing site, with five interconnected performance stages, acting almost like portals. Each one activates with a performance, then hands over to the next.
The spacecraft idea isn’t meant to be literal sci-fi, it’s more a metaphor for arrival, possibility and forward movement.
A panoramic LED backdrop wraps the arena, shifting environments throughout the night and creating a sense of scale that reads both in-room and on screen
W*: What were the first images, references or materials that went onto your moodboard?
MB: I often begin with mood-board imagery, but this time it was more instinctive. I could see the design in my head, very clearly and went straight into sketching. The central idea was multiple kinetic towers almost like industrial chandeliers – referencing Manchester’s industrial heritage. The towers are populated with a mix of solid and transparent LED panels alongside integrated lighting fixtures, allowing them to shift character depending on the performance. They can feel elegant and lightweight or dense and architectural. Crucially, they’re also functional: when you’re moving quickly between five stages, you need devices that allow for rapid resets. The towers can descend to the floor and act as closedown screens, helping us transition between performances, seamlessly.
The BRITs sit at an interesting intersection; they’re celebratory, but they’re also about cultural relevance. They need scale, but they also need that British grit and authenticity.
Misty Buckley
At the back of the arena, there’s a vast panoramic screen that creates expansive vistas and fully immerses the audience in the environments designed by our content collaborators, North House.
Suspended above the central stage is a UFO-like structure, reinforcing the idea of arrival and anchoring the space visually from above. At key moments, bridges descend to physically connect the performance stages, allowing artists to move between them and emphasising the idea of one continuous, interconnected environment.
The design centres around kinetic towers – vertical structures that combine lighting rigs with semi-transparent LED surfaces
W*: Is there a particular technical or structural element this year that proved especially challenging?
MB: Despite the Co-op having significant weight loading capacity around the arena, we still have the inevitable challenges that are synonymous with a multi act award show. Once you hang PA, Lighting, screens etc, the weight allowance is somewhat reduced. Add to that, my two giant chandeliers and a UFO and weight is a lot.
We naturally want to accommodate every artist’s creative and their 'dream' set, so there is a delicate balance that our incredible Band Production Manager, Maggie Mouzakatis has to find.
Each tower can move independently, allowing them to shift from architectural presence to atmospheric lighting devices
W*: How do you design a set that works both for the live audience in the arena and for millions watching on television?
MB: It’s always a balancing act. In the arena, it’s about scale and immersion; you want the audience to feel completely surrounded by the energy of it.
For television, though, you’re thinking differently. It’s about framing, depth and how the camera moves through the space. This year’s multi-stage layout really supports that. It gives Phil Heyes, the director, incredible flexibility; layering action in the foreground and background, shooting across the arena, revealing one stage from another. Ultimately, you’re designing in two ways at once; in three dimensions for the audience in the room, and in moving frames for the viewers at home. When those two experiences complement each other, the show really comes to life.
Bridges between stages enable performers to transition seamlessly across the set, reinforcing the idea of a continuous journey
W*: What does the design timeline for something like the BRITs actually look like, from first conversation to final build?
MB: The process really begins almost as soon as the previous show ends; with reflection. We look at what worked and what was less successful. Usually we have around eight months to design the BRITs, but this time the conversations started earlier, around March 2025, when the move to Manchester was first being explored.
By June, we had a strong vision that the whole team shared confidence in. From there, it moves into months of drawing, modelling, refining and aligning with production, lighting, video and then the conversations with artists about their individual sets.
By the time we finally step into the arena, the show has already been designed dozens of times on paper; carefully tested, challenged and refined and then it’s all systems go.
Misty Buckley
The physical build comes relatively late in the process and we have a very limited time to load everything in, so the process is underpinned by an enormous amount of digital planning and collaboration. By the time we finally step into the arena, the show has already been designed dozens of times on paper; carefully tested, challenged and refined and then it’s all systems go.
The towers descend into the floor between performances, acting as close-down screens and enabling rapid resets throughout the live broadcast
W*: You’ve designed the BRIT Awards for many years now. How has the show evolved during that time, and has your own approach to it changed?
MB: This will be my eighth BRIT Awards as Production Designer, which feels both surreal and slightly ageing, if I’m honest. But I’m incredibly proud of it. I actually began my career 24 years ago as a design assistant on the BRITs, working for Bill Laslett. I was there from 2002 to 2005 before heading off to develop my own voice and career as a Production Designer. Then, in 2017, Jason Iley [Chairman of the BRITs Committee from 2017-2019] invited me back to design the show in my own right. It felt like a genuinely circular moment. Jason put a great deal of trust in me, which I’ll always be grateful for.
The show itself has evolved enormously. In the early 2000s, the artists were perhaps more outrageous in their behaviour. It was the Brit pop era so it was edgy and exciting – there was a certain unpredictability to it all and we probably got away with a lot more under the health and safety radar.
It was the Britpop era – edgy and exciting – with a certain unpredictability to it all and we probably got away with a lot more under the health and safety radar.
Misty Buckley
Today, the creativity is still bold, but the production values are far more sophisticated. The technical expectations are higher, there is more emphasis on full creative production of each artist's performance and the level of integration between set, lighting and screen content is much more advanced.
For me personally, it’s important to approach each year as if it’s the first. No two shows should ever look the same. Some years I lean into something more theatrical, other years it’s cleaner and more architectural. I also try to connect the set design to the BRIT Award itself (this year's is designed by Matthew Williamson) as it creates a subtle narrative thread through the show, which I think gives it cohesion and identity beyond a single night.
Industrial references informed the aesthetic, drawing loosely on Manchester’s built landscape
W*: What makes the BRITs unique from a production design perspective?
MB: The BRITs sit at an interesting intersection; they’re celebratory, but they’re also about cultural relevance. They need scale, but they also need that British grit and authenticity.
There’s a certain British tone; a balance of confidence and irreverence, that shapes the design language. It can’t feel too polished or too ceremonial. It has to feel alive and have a bit of edge, that you can’t always get away with on other ceremonies.
Because the UK music scene is so diverse, rich and iconic, the set has to be adaptable. It must hold everything from stripped-back intimacy to full-scale spectacle in one cohesive environment.
W*: Your work is inherently ephemeral. When the lights go down and the arena empties, what does that moment feel like for you?
MB: Honestly? I’d love to say I sit quietly in the empty arena and reflect on the creative journey - but the reality is usually far less poetic. By the time the lights go down, I’m already mentally juggling the next six projects, planning meals for my kids, thinking about laundry, and probably packing a suitcase to get to the Oscars on time. The reflection tends to come a little later, often when things are calmer and I can properly process what we built and what it meant. But in those quieter moments, what I do feel very clearly is gratitude. I genuinely love what I do. Designing something on that scale, collaborating with such talented people, and getting to create environments that hold these cultural moments; it’s a privilege. I feel very lucky that this is my job.