As NoNonsense celebrates 15 years in business, we’re taking the opportunity to look back at some of the projects, people and moments that have shaped who we are today.
Under the banner Celebrating 15 Years – The builds behind the brand, we’ll be sharing 15 memorable moments from across our journey so far. These are the jobs that challenged us, stretched us, made us proud and helped define the straightforward, solution-focused approach that NoNonsense is known for.
The timing of our 15 Memorable Moments campaign also aligns with the AIF’s First Festival Week 2026, a new campaign celebrating the UK’s independent festival scene. Running from Friday 15th May to Thursday 21st May 2026, the initiative will see more than 200 independent festivals share archive stories and memories of first festival performances, early career moments and formative festival experiences. We’re proud to have been an AIF Friend for many years.
AIF’s campaign recognises that every festival story starts somewhere. For artists, that might be a first small-stage slot. For fans, it might be the first field, tent or crowd that made them fall in love with festivals. For suppliers like us, it is often the first build that proves what is possible.
For us, Parklife was that moment. It was our first major festival stage and remains one of the most memorable projects in our history. The Warehouse Project wanted to make a statement for its 20,000-capacity outdoor dance arena at Heaton Park in Manchester, working with designer Paul Atkinson on a bold concept: a space-age Mayan temple, with an ‘industrial jungle meets space invaders’ feel.
The challenge was to take a hugely ambitious creative idea and make it buildable, safe, cost-effective and practical for a live festival environment. The original concept centred heavily on containers, but building the full structure from containers alone would have been prohibitively expensive. NoNonsense developed an alternative solution that retained the impact of the design while making the project more affordable and reusable over multiple years.
The final Temple Stage stood almost 50 metres wide and six storeys high, constructed from 70 tonnes of equipment including seven containers, scaffolding, six staircases, customised steel sheets, more than 100 precision-cut holes for video and lighting, VIP dance platforms and 20 tonnes of ballast.
It was a job that demanded collaboration from the outset, with close coordination between site, design, lighting, sound, video and production teams. As the production requirements had evolved over the years, the structure had to be updated and adapted with it, including changes to improve sightlines and accommodate PA positions. The result was a stage that became a focal point of the festival, with an atmosphere that made many festivalgoers mistake it for the main stage.
For NoNonsense, Parklife was memorable not just because of its scale, but because it showed what the company could do: take a challenging brief, find a practical route through it, and deliver something with real impact. Designer Paul Atkinson summed it up at the time, saying: “My design was challenging and I thought unbuildable, however the team at NoNonsense found a way.” It was also responsible for our first ever award win at the Festival Supplier Awards in 2014 when we took home the accolade of Best Staging.
Fifteen years on, we’re proud to still be building for the events and festival industry, working alongside the people and teams who turn ambitious ideas into live experiences. Over the coming weeks, we’ll be sharing more of the builds behind the brand: 15 moments from 15 years of NoNonsense.