London Design Festival

Festival 2007

 

Ben Evans and Will Knight, organizers of the London Design Festival filled us in on new developments in the festival and the inclusion of the Hidden Art Forum in the programme.

 

 

Ben Evans: The biggest difference is that there will be a central London hub: a main venue in the city at the Royal Festival Hall. The festival launch will be held there, and it will act as an information point, a press centre, and feature a program of activities, talks and exhibitions. It’s an opportunity for a much wider group of Londoners and visitors to find out more about the festival in a key London building. The hall has just emerged from a two and a half year renovation program; the Southbank Centre is a very good place to be at the moment.

 

We felt that in previous years the festival has been everywhere but nowhere. There were over 200 events last year, spread across the city. It lacked a heart: a pulse at the centre. This year the Royal Festival Hall will act as that pulse.

 

The mayor will be attending the launch and we are working with Swarovski Crystal Palace as our main sponsor. It will be an opportunity to see some of the prototypes in the Crystal Palace project, which have never been shown in London before. A selection of the prototypes will be installed in the Royal Festival Hall.

 

William Knight: We are focusing on providing more public-facing projects. The Southbank Centre is an important cultural centre in London, and having the festival there means greater access: the footprint that goes past is 14 million a year. It also provides a link to the ribbon of activity taking place along the river, particularly in relation to the festival when we have got places like the OXO Tower and the Design Museum. Launching it at the Royal Festival Hall is important, but we will also be back in Trafalgar Square, which has become an important space for the festival.

 

Ben: Tom Dixon has come back for a third year. The chair giveaway he did last year was one of the highlights of the festival, it captured people’s imaginations and engaged with a much wider public audience. A feature from last year, which is to be expanded on in 2007, is that we are reaching to a wider public audience: it is very important that design does that. With that in mind, Tom is working on a project involving sustainability and lighting, which will have more details emerging closer to the festival. We are also doing work with the International Lomographic Society, you may have come across the Russian origin Lomo cameras; some of them do fisheye shots, some of them do panaoramic photos, some break the image up into 4 different sections. They have an international membership and organise events all over the world; last time it was Beijing, this time it is London’s turn. There will be a wall with 100’000 images on it, built around the perimeter of Trafalgar Square. Members of the public and enthusiasts will have sent in those images worldwide, with the brief ‘inspired by design’, so they will come back to the with different photographs of London design.

 

One section of the wall will be made up by people have gone to Trafalgar Square, been given a camera and gone off and taken a photograph of London design which inspires them. It will happen during the festival, adding a very participative element. Trafalgar square will have a design presence for six days.

 

Another project will go up around Festival Hall, linking leading architects and designers with a specific material. We are working on four different projects with Zaha Hadid, Thomas Heatherwick, Amanda Levete and Ron Arad. They are choosing a material such as concrete and Corian and the exercise is about exploring the limits and the form of the medium and showing that you can do something interesting with it. Concrete in particular carries with it a negative view: that it is rough grey and heavy. Actually it can be very light, flexible and pure white. Showing that these materials have different dimensions to them will become a new form of public art with a design basis. They will be major installations placed in outside spaces around the Southbank Centre. As an external exhibition, it will allow design to greet a massive audience that was previously more or less unknown to the design world.

 

 

William: It is very easy to get involved in the festival: simply a matter of contacting the festival office. We have been busy encouraging a range of different organizations and partners, advising them on what they can do and how we might be able to help them. One of the things that we are greatly encouraged about this year, as we have been in previous years, is the number of new people who are engaging in the festival. They are looking at where their place is in design and how they can interact. I think that last year we saw a fantastic increase in terms of the quality of investment in the festival program. Having talked to hundreds of people about September in London, including Hidden Art who are critical partners, it seems that it will be a really fantastic year for the festival.

 

Ben: I think it will probably be the most diverse festival yet. As we move forward it becomes clear that design is quite porous, and lots of people from very different worlds believe it to be relevant to them. That dynamic between design and other worlds is probably the most interesting and fertile area. It allows us to have relationships with science, art and pretty much every other important sector in the UK.

 

William: For example, one of the strands emerging for 2007 is a much more business orientated dialogue. We are working with the Financial Times this year, doing a series of seminars at the Southbank Centre, looking at the implications of design integrating with business. As well as the private receptions, private views and parties, there is going to be a strain of intellectual rigor throughout the festival. We are working with business schools and universities, as we always have done. I think the period is now being seen as able to incorporate that spectrum of activity which includes the all-important ability to communicate the impact of design in broadest possible sense.

 

Ben: There’s a gritty component as well, last year there were over 120 selling shows, offering design in all sorts and shapes and forms. Therefore there is an opportunity for people of all shapes and sizes; our partners range from the V&A right down to the smallest studio of individual designers who want to use the platform as an opportunity to meet a new audience. The feedback from last year was that all of those shows were successful, in that people were generating business and making sales. That is very important to the army of designers out there who are trying to do their own thing too.

 

 

William: We are really delighted that the Hidden Art forum has moved to be part of the festival program. It reflects the importance of the period to designer-makers. Not everyone can stage events under their own steam, be it an issue of space, time or resources. The ability to come together to discuss issues, which affect their businesses and the progress of their careers, is critical.

 

The relationship we have had with Hidden Art, and the other partners on the forum, has resulted in the creation of a fantastic event. The feedback from last year has been really worthwhile. We are lucky to have the support of Bloomberg, who will be hosting the event again. It is a genuinely valuable event, not only for the people who attend but also for the festival; it is reflecting the interest and the value points of the festival as a whole.

 

Ben: The cohesiveness of the festival, its industry and sector it tries to represent are made more coherent by events like the Hidden Art Forum. The more networking events made available the better; they are invaluable.

 

William: What we want people to feel, be they consumers, international visitors or the design community of London, is that they have taken something from the festival; it might be a commission, it might be a contact, information or just the professional experience of putting on an event or attending the Forum. If the value to that individual or organization can be taken from the festival then we will have done our job.

 

As long as everyone has also had a really good time and the fantastic design community we have in London is reflected for the actual period then we will have been successful.

 

 

Ben: In 2003, the first year, we had 45 projects; last year we had 208. It’s hard to tell at this point but it will between 200 and 250 for 2007. The first three years saw it double in size each year. What has been interesting is new people who come forward from unexpected quarters: those we wouldn’t naturally have thought of. It makes it different each year.

 

William: Rather than having themes to our festivals we have threads, and we can choose to emphasise them or not. Other than the business and issue-based threads, there is sustainability, which is clearly important. A lot of the projects we will be working with and promoting will have a sustainability angle or story, or a narrative that we might potentially really draw out this year.

 

We have worked with the London Development Agency and Creative London since the beginning of the festival. Recently we have been involved in tough negotiations regarding the future of their support. We are pleased to say they have agreed to support the festival for the next three years. This is really important for us because it reflects the respect that both the London Development Agency and the Mayor’s Office, as their political partners, pay in terms of what the design sector has to contribute to London’s economy.

 

Ben: ‘London is a creative place’ is a very important message to send out and it hasn’t happened enough, not just in the design sector but also across the creative sector. The mayor’s office obviously understands that it is important; one in five new jobs in London are in the creative sector. Other cities around the world are playing catch-up. When we started the festival there were three or four comparable events in international cities. There are at least 20 now. I’m sure that before we know it there will be 50.

 

It is important for London to stay in that leading position, and that’s why we need the support of government and the Mayor’s office; I’m pleased to say they understand that as well. Through Gordon Brown, central government is getting involved as well. When we first started trying to get a minister to say, “London is a very creative city,” it wouldn’t happen. They didn’t believe it and they were not prepared to come out with such a statement. A couple of years ago Gordon Brown was the first senior minister to do so, which opened up the doors and brought about a sea change in perception. It is part of what makes up London’s identity, one of the few real competitive edges we have left.

 

William: You need showcase events like the London Design Festival, Frieze Art Fair and the Film Festival to genuinely demonstrate that to senior ministers, a skeptical public or overseas visitors.

 

Ben: Time Out is as thick as it is for a reason; there is so much going on in London. The blessing of living in a big city is that we are just bombarded with things to do. However, making your voice heard is made much more difficult and many of the partners we work with, particularly the smaller ones, find it a real struggle. I hope that’s one of the key benefits of everyone showing together in a concentrated period. There were 400 separate articles in the UK press alone last year.

 

William: It brings design into the mainstream. All of the weekend papers now do an annual design issue of their magazines during the festival. It is about consolidating what we are doing all year round; it helps give the press something to focus on. It also helps for people who come to London who want to understand what is happening. The fact is they will be able to come in September and see what is essentially London’s design community as a whole, out and about welcoming people through their doors, which you would not get at any other period of time.

 

The guide will be available at the beginning of September, this year we are working with Pentagram who are going to take it to another stage. I hope it will be a collectible: something you keep as a record of what was happening that year. That’s our ambition for it. We will have a bigger editorial at the beginning and more orientation through the city and more guidance for those who don’t know design very well, or indeed don’t know London very well.