‘It’s not just about the UK, this is a global moment’: inside the most important Brit Awards ever

Every February for the past decade, The Brit Awards have taken over the entire complex of London’s O2. With five days to set up, another for the actual ceremony and then one more to take it all apart again afterwards, ‘The Biggest Night in British Music’ has hosted everyone from Adele to David Bowie, welcomes 12,000 attendees and pulls in TV audiences of over four million on ITV.

Tonight, after the O2’s doors have remained shut for over 14 months due to Covid, the Brits return to The O2 alongside a real-life audience of 4000 people, including 2500 key workers. The live ceremony is part of the ongoing series of pilots overseen by the Government’s Events Research Program (ERP), with the data gathered hopefully helping the entire live music industry reopen after a painfully challenging year.

It will be a “completely different and exceptional event,” says Gennaro Castaldo, Communications Director at the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), which organises The Brit Awards. Winners will receive two trophies designed by Es Devlin OBE and Yinka Ilori MBE. The main one is meant to be treasured forever while they’re encouraged to gift the second “baby Brit Award” to someone they think deserves recognition – be it family, friend, colleague or key worker.

Once at their seats (a majority of which will be on Level One) the audience won’t have to wear masks and there’ll be no social distancing. Onstage, performers such as Dua Lipa will be free to do what they want – although winners are being discouraged from hugging on stage so as not to set the wrong example to audiences watching at home (the ceremony is also being broadcast live on ITV).

Planning for The Brit Awards 2021 started as soon as last year’s event ended last February. But in June, they decided to postpone it by a few months, hoping we’d be in a better situation by then. The Grammys, The Oscars and The Baftas all did something similar. In the months since, The 02 and The Brit Awards committee have been working on two different plans. The first being a live show with an audience. The other, a pre-recorded ceremony behind closed doors. Either way, “we were determined there would be an event”, says Castaldo.

The O2 was also involved in an ongoing conversation about being involved in any pilot schemes but a fully live Brit Awards was only confirmed eight weeks ago. Despite all the planning, the team has had to squeeze a year’s worth of organization into a handful of weeks. Even now, Danielle Kennedy-Clark, deputy general manager at The O2, is busy crossing the t’s and dotting the i’s.

“There’s still a lot that needs to happen before Tuesday,” she told me last week. “Everything has to be perfect. It’s not just the show we’re focused on, it’s also the challenge of it being the biggest indoor test event that’s happened since the start of the pandemic.” With the team at The O2 and the scientists of the government’s Events Research Programme coming from two very different worlds, “there’ve been a lot of conversations and a lot of curveballs to get to where we are today. We’ve had to be as flexible as possible. We’ve really worked hand in glove with them on it.”

Everyone attending the Brits tonight will need a negative test in the 36 hours before the event, and the audience will be asked to complete a PCR test five days later. Scientists will be on hand to observe crowd flow and measure things like ventilation, air circulation and use of sanitisers. To further reduce congestion, the crowd will be able to pre-order drinks or food from an app on their phone, then go and pick it up at the bar. A 1000-strong team at the O2 last week started a process of “intense training” for the night itself.

Likewise, the 700-odd people setting up the event have needed a negative test every three days (The 02 has a dedicated test centre) with the results uploaded onto their workers’ pass. It’s impossible for them to enter the building without one. The time scale for the set-up has also doubled to allow for social distancing, with separate teams forming bubbles. Not part of the pilot, they’re following the current arts guidance.

Music, Castaldo explains, has played such a significant part of people’s lives throughout this pandemic and he hopes The Brit Awards is “both a celebration of British music and a reflection of the year we’ve been through. We felt this weight of expectation to deliver.”

Having that in-person audience is hugely important to the Brits. “It’s brilliant for the artists to actually have someone to feed off of and as a TV event, it’ll have a completely different atmosphere,” Castaldo tells me. Other award ceremonies have struggled under Covid restrictions but “hopefully the Brit Awards will be that much more magic. We've been starved of those brilliant live moments.”

He’s confident the 4000-strong audience will make as much noise as the 12,000 people usually in attendance, and, despite the science happening behind the scenes, he’s adamant “it has to start and end with the spectacle. If you make it a dull event, then what's the point?”

The data gathered will help dictate how, and when, venues of every shape and size can reopen. “It’s absolutely vital,” says Kennedy-Clark. “Without these pilots, we’d never be able to gather the evidence about how safe it is to go to gigs, which is something we’ve never needed before. That’s what’s been so hard about getting out of this pandemic, there’s no clear science to suggest you’re as safe at an indoor gathering as you are going to a supermarket,” so of course the government is being cautious.

“You can see they’re trying to bring about meaningful change in the right way,” starts Castaldo though he goes on to explain how “live music has taken a huge hit this past year. Whether it's big festivals, small independent venues, nightclubs or even theatres, they’ve not been able to do their thing and it's come at a massive cost financially, culturally and socially.”

He knows it’s entirely possible for things to take place with a limited or non-existence audience “but that's not going to do anything financially for those venues. The key thing is getting events back at scale.”

As it stands, The O2 has received no guidance on how it can reopen on June 21st. “There’s a level of anxiety around that being a feasible date or if it will still have some restrictions in place,” Kennedy-Clark tells me. Because of that, artists and promoters are hesitant to book anything in straight away “but they’re definitely booking things from summertime onwards. Autumn, I believe, will be really busy for us.”

Castaldo thinks part of the decision to use The Brit Awards as a test event was the fact that it's televised, so it means everyone can feel involved in this historic moment. It should also make people feel more confident about the immediate future of live music. Tens of thousands of key workers applied for tickets to the awards and following the pilot events in Liverpool last weekend, Kennedy-Clark has already seen “much more traction with bookings as well as an influx of ticket sales”.

The Brits, she hopes, “needs to represent the future. The light is shining brightly at the end of that tunnel and we're certainly on the path to recovery.” She knows all eyes will be on The O2 and “the pressure is there. But we feel we're able to step up to that challenge and deliver what we need to deliver for the industry as a whole. Hopefully this pilot can help reignite the entire industry.”

“It’s not just about a UK audience either,” explains Castaldo. “The rest of the world has been watching how we’ve been leading the way in coming out of lockdown with the vaccination program and now these pilot events. It’s not just a moment for the UK, this is a global moment.” Four decades since their inception, “this is arguably the most significant, the most important of all The Brit Awards that we've ever had.”

Watch The Brit Awards at 8pm tonight on ITV