University of the Arts London at London Design Festival 2024
- Written byPress Office
- Published date 10 September 2024
As another vibrant and thought-provoking edition of the annual London Design Festival approaches this September, creatives from across University of the Arts are gearing up to showcase how design can serve as a catalyst for meaningful change. From bio-textiles featuring hair, giant red-oak structures, and staff and student exhibitions, UAL’s involvement with this year’s festival epitomises why the world needs creativity.
Taking place from 14 – 22 September 2024, with some projects spanning beyond this, be sure to explore the remarkable work of UAL’s world-leading staff and students.
Participating projects include:
- Vert, Parade Ground, Chelsea College of Arts, 14 September – 14 October
- Locally Grown and HEREWEAR at Material Matters, Bargehouse, 18 – 21 September
- Evolving Stories, Peckham Levels (5th Floor), 14 – 20 September
- The Observatory, Lethaby Gallery, Central Saint Martins, 12 September – 31 October
Find out more about these projects below.
Vert
Chelsea College of Arts Parade Ground
14 September – 14 October
Located on the Parade Ground of Chelsea College of Arts, Vert is one of this year’s festival’s landmark installations. Vert is a sustainable structure made from red-oak glulam that proposes an innovative architectural solution for cooling cities and increasing urban biodiversity.
This living ecosystem is designed to support biodiversity, as well as enriching the urban environment and provide a sheltered space where visitors to the festival can gather – all while asking important questions about urban development, ecological resilience and community engagement.
Vert will remain in place for a total of four weeks following London Design Festival.
Locally Grown and HEREWEAR
@ Material Matters
Bargehouse OXO Tower Wharf
18 – 21 September
Head over to Bargehouse at OXO Tower Wharf, where the Material Matters fair gathers over 50 leading brands, designers, and makers to celebrate the impact of materials on our lives. The fair features products, installations, exhibitor spaces, and talks, exploring the circular economy and the importance of material intelligence in design, including the work of our very own Chelsea College of Arts academics.
- Discover the future of materials with Studio Sanne Visser’s Locally Grown installation at the London Design Festival's Material Matters showcase. Led by Sanne Visser, a PhD student at Chelsea College of Arts’ Centre for Circular Design, this interactive exhibit explores the potential of human hair as a scalable, regenerative material. Visitors can engage with the entire process, from live hair-cutting and spinning to ropemaking demonstrations, highlighting the transformation of hair into versatile design objects. As a continuation of the Locally Grown project launched at the Design Museum in 2022, this exhibit also introduces collaborations with like-minded designers to create unique pieces using hair yarn, cord, and rope, emphasizing sustainable and circular design practices.
- Professor Becky Earley, fashion textile designer and co-creator of Chelsea College of Arts’ Centre for Circular Design, along with lead academic Rosie Hornbuckle, Post-Doctoral Research Fellow in Complex Design Collaborations, will also be presenting the HEREWEAR Project. The showcase will feature new biobased materials made from agriwaste, prototype garments that test this new material, analogue tools and design guidelines for using biobased materials in product development processes, and a digital hub for sharing and educating on material development, circular design, and systems thinking research.
Evolving StoriesPeckham Levels (5th Floor)
14 – 20 September
Peckham Levels (5th Floor)
14 – 20 September
Explore Evolving Stories, an exhibition featuring 12 projects from across Camberwell and Chelsea Colleges of Arts that blend design, narrative, and social justice. Engage with interactive installations that demonstrate how design can inspire meaningful change and foster community connection.
Camberwell College of Arts’ MA Global Collaborative Design Practice student projects include:
- Fuzzy Borders, Gather Round, and Look Alive! use co-creation and innovative design to tackle issues like loneliness, mental health, and multi-species connections. Fuzzy Borders presents work with Japanese teenagers in creating art-based learning tools that enhance future literacy and mental health. Gather Round addresses loneliness through workshops and community co-design, focusing on social justice and collective action. Look Alive! reconnects city dwellers with nature through urban habitats and narrative workshops. Unworn Stories and ExpressABILITY facilitate cross-cultural dialogue and improve pain communication using design and interactive tools. Taiyo Talks fosters understanding through participatory design, while Kyoto Krafts and Responsive by Design aim to support traditional crafts and enhance service responses for poverty.
Also included in the exhibition, students from Year 3 BA Interior and Spatial Design at Camberwell College of Arts present:
- Toilet Stories, a student-driven design project and global collaboration between Camberwell College of Arts, RMIT University, and Toronto Metropolitan University. The project explores the complex social, political, and spatial dynamics surrounding often-overlooked public toilets. Students examine themes like gender, safety, and societal responsibility through installations in the South Kensington Pedestrian Tunnel. Jessica Olorunfemi, a featured student, emphasises that the project focuses on "honing in on the critical need for accessible spaces to become the new normal."
Lastly, Grad Dip Textile Design and Grad Dip Graphic Design students from Chelsea College of Arts present:
- Carrier Bag Climate, a new research project exploring feminist storytelling for climate justice, using digital knit and Augmented Reality technology. A collaboration between UAL Climate Emergency Network, The Rodina, and Tilburg TextielLab, it features 24 students creating activist textiles that incorporate fiction with environmental themes and more-than-human perspectives to address the climate emergency. Through a series of workshops, the practitioners have applied their learning in the context of London.
Book your place on a workshop.
The Observatory
Lethaby Gallery, Central Saint Martins
12 September – 31 October
Step inside The Observatory and view the life and work of Central Saint Martins in an exhibition celebrating interdependence in creative practice. Across art, design and performance, projects by students and staff demonstrate creativity as a connector: of people, places and ideas. This exhibition gathers a breadth of projects from across material innovation, socially engaged design, digital exploration and beyond. It counters the idea of a singular practitioner to demonstrate how creative practice – and creative education – rely on an interdependent network of people, moments, spaces, resources and skills.
Coffee morning at the Observatory
Thursday 19 September, 11am-1pm
Join the Observatory curators, designers and exhibitors for an informal coffee in the Lethaby Gallery and take a closer look at some of the projects in the show, including Felix McCrossen-Sadler's ReRoasted, which explores new ways of working with spent coffee grounds in ceramics.
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Find out more about London Design Festival.