Red Bull Featured
Creating a new space for BMX world-firsts
BMX had a problem nobody wanted to say out loud. The crowd was in the wrong place.
Red Bull wanted to change that. Not just the format, but the atmosphere, the access, the energy.
Working with BMX legend Bas Keep, we co-created a new contest structure from the ground up.
"The riders kept telling us the crowd were too far away. That became the brief: how can we put the fans closer than they've ever been? And I remember thinking, how close is close enough? We ended up at three metres. We put them in the action."
Shelley Kent, Producer
We built The Wall – a three-tier structure inside Manchester Central that put 2,500 fans within three metres of the riders.
A tunnel ran beneath the ramp and into the heart of it, so when a world-first happened above you, you didn’t watch it. You felt the air move.
It was also unmistakably Manchester.
Marcus Method, the Manchester artist we worked with on the space, wanted it to feel like the city. Not a Red Bull event that happened to be in Manchester but a Manchester thing that Red Bull had the good sense to show up for. He painted the mural live as the night unfolded – growing as the event grew.
We witnessed eleven world-firsts that night.
Proof that when you build from inside a community rather than on top of it, athletes go further, crowds go louder, and the sport moves forward.
