This week I was delighted to attend the Birmingham Design Festival.
It’s a renowned annual celebration of all things design-based. Each year it alternates between a three-day city-wide festival and a focussed two-day single-venue conference.
2026 is a full ‘festival’ year, and with nearly 500 speakers, four venues, and a packed programme of talks, workshops, screenings, displays and pop-up shops, it seemed too good to miss.
Our industry is always evolving but never more so than right now, hence the theme of this year’s festival is “change”. This was explored throughout much of the programme – I went to a particularly interesting talk by ‘House of Oddities’ on embracing the human idiosyncrasies that AI just can’t (yet) replicate.
I also went to a workshop run by Akiko Stehrenberger, an incredible award-winning American movie poster designer; toured round all the venues and was tempted to buy some stunning books; hand-screen-printed my own event t-shirt; and met by chance a former colleague, Adam, when we were both en-route to the ‘headline act’ of the whole thing that evening.
That evening event featured the infamous ‘Cold War Steve’, who took us through some of his irreverent photomontages, and ‘Led by Donkeys’, the guerilla artists known for - among other things - projecting imagery onto the Houses of Parliament.
They explained the fascinating background and personal dangers behind some of their work, and how they ended up creating the National Covid Memorial Wall.
Overall, a really inspiring day - thanks to CWA for these ‘Spark Day’ opportunities!
Chris Nobbs
