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F rom an early age, Nicoline Refsing was driven to create experiences that inspire audiences. During an expansive career, she has excelled in the creative direction and production design for some of the world’s most legendary sold-out stadium tours, amazing award shows and big brand launch events. The Danish ‘Queen of Eurovision’ sits down with LIVE to share her story and insights into her own company, Rockart Design.
Can you take us through your career history up until now? I attended a fine art school in Denmark where I studied spacious design, which is a subject that sits in-between interior and architecture, but with a particularly artistic approach towards how we can understand and communicate in space and spacious relations. During these studies, I was introduced to production design through Val Strazovec. One of my teachers had studied under him, and I completely understood his theories and approach to production design. After my first year, I was lucky to have been invited to do some rather large productions, in some big venues in Denmark. I come from a musical family – there was always music on in the background. I’ve also been to a lot of gigs; I went to see the Bridges to Babylon tour by the Rolling Stones – a huge stadium show involving a hydraulic bridge going from the A-stage to the B-stage without support. It was absolutely phenomenal and I decided then and there it was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. During the time where I was working on my graduate project, I helped create the design for a rock concert under Mark Fisher. One of my teachers came in one day and said, ‘you do realise he’s the guy who designed the big Pink Floyd and Rolling Stones tours that you’ve been to?’. I thought to myself, ‘I’m going to work for this guy’. I graduated and started to learn more about Mark Fisher and studied every show he had ever done. I thought about how I could work up from being relatively newly graduated and take that leap to work at the highest international level possible. I remember seeing a documentary from a leading fashion designer, who was talking about all these young people coming to him for work and how he couldn’t just afford to give them a job, but if they had the money themselves, he could at least give them experience. I realised this was what I needed to do to get started. Eventually, I managed to
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