KD was founded in 2007 by Alan Kingsley-Dobson, after 5 years working as freelance crew went out on his own and KD was born. Within weeks was providing event crew across London and the UK. Working in Theatre, Rock N Roll, Corporate and fashion. Notably Ice Rinks, working on the Royal Palace ice rinks and the Winter Wonderland for many years to come.
However, by 2011 KD had started to become more than just a crew company and began taking on small build projects for Theatre and Fashion in a shared workshop in Newhaven East Sussex, along with providing on site carpentry. Introducing the infamous ‘Wood Butchers’ chippy squad.
Phil KD begun assisting KD on a handful of projects part-time, with a more technical background aided us to take on more production/tech work. Alan had also begun working as a production manager on projects and shows alongside providing crew, with a significant amount of work at the 2012 Olympics on the Ceremonies.
KD builds its first large scale project, Kings X Roller Rink at Central St Martins, taking on the technical design aspects for the first time.
KD heads to Glasgow for the Commonwealth Games Welcome Ceremonies, building the set for the NYT show in the process.
KD moves into its first permanent workshop at the NYT Building at Holloway Road. While still providing crew across London begins to transition into a set building company, taking on more complex projects and developing the design capabilities. With a huge amount of work at the Royal Albert Hall to re-finish the stage and arena.
Having quickly run out of space at Holloway Road KD relocates to an 8000 sq ft workshop in Abbey Wood. An area seeing constant re-generation with direct access to central London. Taking projects to Germany and California along with building a full-size train carriage and work for AMG Mercedes F1 team. This year in fact saw the busiest crew year working on thousands of jobs, providing crew for Metallica, Iron Maiden, Guns N Roses and AC/DC.
Rapidly expanding our work portfolio including Worldwide Display rollout for BALLY and re-development of Arches near to the workshop installing huge animal sculptures made from Jesmonite.
Highlight builds of Dancing on Ice Arena tour, Refurbishment of Chicago, Glastonbury Festival and BBC’s Chase the Case gameshow.
KD work extensively on Only Fools and Horses the musical, building a vast array of the show’s props, then we headed to the Leicester Curve for a major re-development of the auditorium with Charcoal blue. Plus, we worked closely with Cake/EE to deliver to supercharged seats project at Wembley Stadium.
The start of this year kicked off with a bang for KD as we delivered the EE 5G bus tour with Cake group (Sadly cancelled in March). And a 90% Scale Tank and 50% Scale Spitfire for the Arena tour of Grandpas Great Escape. When Covid hit we suffered very hard initially but were very fortunate to then be asked to build a series of TV show sets for Manoto TV, and various other projects which continued into 2021. Once of which was KD’s first creative design commission. We also to took the decision to scale back on the crew operation and focus on the workshop.
Continuing a large TV set project for Manoto TV designed by Jack Morton USA, we then begun work for Brenmar/IBM in delivering their new offices on the Southbank. We also worked extensively on the new Cabaret show at the Playhouse Theatre, along with re-development work at Theatre Royal Plymouth in the Drum Theatre…
2025