“I couldn’t believe it. Not a single part of me thought I would make it this far,” says designer Emily Mahon, recalling the moment she learned she was one of this year’s Linbury Prize for Stage Design recipients. Her astonishment echoes across the selected designers whose work fills the National Theatre this December.
Offering its recipients £6,000 bursaries, paid professional placements and national visibility, this year’s exhibition showcases the next generation of designers. From 2nd December, the Linbury Prize exhibition is on display to the public at the National Theatre, showcasing work by twelve recipients whose ideas reflect the multiplicity of contemporary stage design.
The exhibition brings together model boxes, costumes, design sketches and conceptual worlds created by this year’s twelve recipients: Cal Owens, Emily Mahon, Haiyan Hester Xue 薛海燕, Isaac O’Brien, James Stibilj, Kathy Udaondo, Kezi Ferguson, Miriam Dheva-Aksorn, Willoughby Brow, Yi Gao, Yuhe Zhang and Zidi Wu.
Among this year’s cohort, six spoke with BRICKS about what it means to receive the only nationwide prize for stage design, an award that has launched over 200 careers since its founding in 1987. For Isaac O’Brien, the moment he received the call was surreal enough to feel dreamlike. “It felt like I left my body for a split second,” he says. “Like the biggest weight had been lifted off me.” The validation, he explains, strips away the exhausting need to constantly prove himself in order to be taken seriously. Fellow recipient Kezi Ferguson agrees: “Receiving this prize means I can realistically pursue theatre design as a career pathway. I feel like I’ve been fast-tracked to the next level.”
Receiving this prize means I can realistically pursue theatre design as a career pathway. I feel like I’ve been fast-tracked to the next level.
Kezi Ferguson
What makes these reactions so charged is how unlikely many of their routes into design have been. Haiyan Hester Xue studied fine art and 2D design for years before discovering the narrative dimensionality of 3D space, shifting her entire practice. Emily Mahon spent half a decade training in theatre design, supported by tutors who encouraged experimentation. Kathy Udaondo came via costume design, shaped by an environment that valued sensitivity and purpose. For James Stibilj, it was the strange stillness of the COVID lockdown that produced his turning point, rewatching Terry Gilliam films and realising he needed to be part of the world of visual storytelling. Ferguson arrives from sculpture and hot-metal casting; O’Brien from a winding path that included a missed university place due to disrupted A-level grading, a year spent cleaning toilets, and finally training at LIPA.
Each of their stories reveals a reality about the sector that the Prize aims to support: talent is abundant, but opportunity is uneven. Access depends on geography, finances, timing, and luck. In its own way, the Linbury Prize is levelling a field that has become increasingly steep.
These individual stories reflect patterns seen across the wider sector. According to data from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, 30% of job vacancies in the cultural sector are currently affected by skills shortages, and it’s a clear indicator of the pressures facing the theatre industry. Early-career designers are contending simultaneously with rising living costs, reduced production budgets and increasingly limited routes into professional practice. These conditions shape not only who can enter the field, but who can afford to remain in it, a concern widely shared by producers, institutions and designers across the sector.
In this landscape, the Linbury Prize is not only an awards programme, but a response to the gaps industry members have been flagging for years: paid opportunities, practical training, and accessible entry points for new talent. This year’s exhibition reflects that approach, not only for applicants, but for visitors too. Guests can navigate through the works using NaviLens codes – designed for people with visual impairments – and all displays are printed on Foamalux Eco boards made from up to 80% reclaimed post-production waste. The result is an exhibition shaped with the same priorities the sector is calling for, focused on accessibility, sustainability and meaningful support for emerging designers.
Working for free is simply not feasible for the vast majority of people. There are incredibly talented designers who don’t lack skills. They lack opportunities.
Isaac O’Brien
To join the Linbury lineage (which includes Es Devlin, Jon Bausor, and Vicki Mortimer) is to step into a history that can feel both humbling and galvanising. “It’s inspiring to see what the Prize can do in terms of access to brilliant mentors,” says Stibilj. Ferguson describes the effect more viscerally: “To occupy the same sphere as these big names only motivates me to dream bigger.”
However, for all the prestige, the designers speak urgently about practical concerns rather than career legacy. The financial fragility of early-career freelancing is a recurring concern. “Working for free is simply not feasible for the vast majority of people,” O’Brien says. “There are incredibly talented designers who don’t lack skills. They lack opportunities.” Stibilj notes the strain of attempting to build a career in London while juggling multiple jobs just to pay rent. Ferguson, who has designed four shows since graduating, says none of them have offered enough income to live on. Xue points to another invisible barrier: the industry’s limited cultural literacy around race, disability, and stereotypes, which can undermine narratives from the outset.
The Prize’s focus on paid placements allows these designers to devote themselves, even briefly, to learning without precarity looming overhead. Udaondo is eager to expand her skills beyond her discipline: “Coming from a costume background, I haven’t had as much hands-on experience with lighting, set, sound or the stage itself, so I’m looking forward to learning how these elements work together.” For Ferguson, it’s the opportunity to learn from collaboration. “I’d love to take notes on the designer/director relationship, which is imperative to the success of the design language.” Meanwhile, Stibilj is excited for the “unexpected lessons” that come from multi-disciplinary creative environments.
What emerges from their voices is a collective hunger for experimentation, for sustainable thinking, and for culturally grounded storytelling. “I think this variety of designers shows us that ideas can be outrageous, and things you once thought were impossible can become possible, but only if we aren’t afraid to challenge ourselves and others,” explains Xue. “It pushes back against statements like ‘It has only been done this way,’ ‘That’s how the industry standard is supposed to be,’ or ‘This is how other people work.’ Ultimately, the procedure may be something we have to follow, but how we follow it is what these pioneers explore, and what they have discovered.”
If the creative industries truly are, as the government asserts, one of the UK’s growth-driving sectors, then the work of supporting early-career designers cannot be symbolic; it must be structural, financially beneficial, and attentive to inequity. The Linbury Prize is not the sole solution to a sector-wide crisis, but for these twelve designers, it’s a start – one that arrives not as a promise, but as a door held open.
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