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There’s no easy way to say this, but the V&A has announced its programme for the 2021 London Design Festival. The annual fest is happening in September and has a really great-looking line-up of contributors, installations, talks and other associated stuff. Following on from the London Design Biennale, which happened at Somerset House earlier in the summer, the theme of this year’s LDF could scarcely be more timely.
In the run-up to November’s UK-hosted Cop26 climate summit, the LDF’s displays will examine the role of design in the face of compelling climate change. The V&A’s visual centrepiece will be Nebbia Works’ ‘Between Forests and Skies’, a low-carbon-aluminium pavilion that will be installed in the pool of the John Madejski Garden in the V&A’s courtyard. Other highlights at the South Ken museum include ‘Placeholders’ by Juliet Haysom and Aude-Line Duliere: historic stone pieces that were salvaged from V&A rebuilding works during 2017, now repurposed as street furniture on Exhibition Road, giving it a kind of Berlin-y vibe. There will also be an ‘artist robot’ wearing a living, growing dress, that draws its self-portrait.
In addition – and directly prompted by the pandemic – there is an impressive roster of V&A events focusing on young people. These include the transformation of empty flats in a 23-storey tower block on the edge of the Olympic Park into a giant camera obscura (above), plus a day of – uh-oh! – ‘speed mentoring’ and workshops for 18- to 24-year-olds during LDF. Finally, there will be a return of the V&A’s first IRL Friday Late in more than a year, with DJ sets, live performances, talks and installations.
It’s a great LDF programme at the museum addressing many vital current issues, and one that really looks to be placing design as something that can both be an entry point for people to these massive, overarching concerns, and hopefully offer some solutions to them. And not an Alessi lemon-squeezer in sight.
London Design Festival. V&A. Sep 18-26. Free.