“When I was at school, nobody asked if I’d consider a career in the performing arts,” recalls multimedia show director Willie Williams. “The focus was very much on practical subjects like engineering, which just wasn’t where my interests lay.” In the end, he followed his instincts and, today, designs and directs live shows, collaborating with household names such as U2, Adele, David Bowie and The Rolling Stones.
“Punk happened – and the message in the air for that brief period was that anybody can do anything,” says the Sheffield native. “It was a perfectly timed message, giving me the confidence to think: ‘This is what I want to do, let’s go and do it.’” So Williams did exactly that, moving from Sheffield to London where he began working with musicians to help create on-stage visuals to accompany each performance, and went on to co-found the creative design agency Treatment Studio. “My goal with live shows has always been to show people something they haven’t seen before, or to help them imagine something completely new,” he says.
