From paper round to Coldplay concerts and the Queen's Jubilee, meet the Yorkshireman producing stage shows across the globe

“The Yorkshire Post was always the biggest paper at the end of the week,” he jokes, “It was the heaviest paper in the bag.”

He now runs NorthHouse Creative, a design and production studio focussed on visuals for live music, which has produced huge global shows from the 2016 Super Bowl Half Time Show, to the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee show last year.

Tom founded NorthHouse in 2011, after moving from Yorkshire to London.

“I basically hired a space under a railway arch for £150 a month,” he says.

“It was on top of a carpenters studio, it stunk of wood shavings and my mac would be covered in sawdust every day when I left work.”

Not too long after founding, the firm would be commissioned to create the stage show for One Direction’s first US tour, before going on to produce Take That’s arena tour in 2015.

The studio now employs nine full time staff, and is set to double in size in the coming months.

Previously the drummer in the band New York Alcoholic Anxiety Attack, Tom found his way into production after studying Art and Design at the University of Leeds.

“When we had the band I was filming us and making what were honestly some terrible music videos,” he says.

“I guess the big turning point for me was when one of my good friends, whose dad was a lighting engineer, got in touch and said he was looking for someone.

“It was just one of those situations where I was in the right place at the right time, I just put everything into it and just learned this new software, and that was when I realised I had found what I wanted to do.”

Most recently, NorthHouse have produced Disney’s live show of Encanto at the Hollywood Bowl amphitheatre in LA.

During the pandemic, NorthHouse used augmented reality to transform Milan’s La Scala opera house for the Green Carpet Fashion Awards..

In 2021, NorthHouse was given the chance to bid for what Tom describes as one of the firm’s most exciting projects.

“We were in the middle of this crazy show with Coldplay, we had so many things going on, but then the Queen’s jubilee came up,and it felt like such a big show that we couldn't let it slip.

“So we put a lot of time and energy into the pitch, we based a lot of the ideas on the Queen’s styling over the years, connecting a few different elements together. I think that's what took it over the line, and we got it.

“I did think ‘this is as big as it gets’ with the Super Bowl in 2016, but then the Queen’s jubilee felt bigger, it felt like we connected with a lot of people. It had a lot of entertainment, but also historical value, and it meant so much to so many people.

“It's always nice when the live entertainment industry can do something good for people, and in this instance we felt like we really were.”

Despite the firm’s global reach, Tom hopes to soon put his skills to use back home in Leeds and Bradford, and hopes to support Bradford in its year of culture celebrations.

“I try to stay connected to Leeds and Bradford as much as possible,” he says, “and with Bradford getting the Year of Culture 2023, we’re hoping we can do something to support that. We’ve got some big ideas that we’re hoping to throw in the pot.”