Wow, so design week is upon us again. The festival has begun and so have the openings, the parties and the free drinks. Several glasses of champagne were enjoyed by myself and Ian Atkins at the LDF launch with Boris Johnson at City Hall on Monday night, a pleasant evening that was certainly brought to life by his speech, despite its late deliverance. That man has a wonderful knack of digging himself a hole, almost deep enough to fall in, but somehow saving himself from the precipice with some charming wit and characterful bumbling.
But this is not the side of the London Design Festival, or indeed most of the exhibitions I have worked on over the years, that creates the fondest memories. For me it is the show build days and all the behind the scene stuff that goes on in constructing these wonderful events for the public to digest. It’s the re-uniting of old friends, faces you see perhaps only once a year, the community, the favours, the accidents, the improvisation and the transformation from seemingly dis-organised chaos into a shiny produced exhibition.
One moment I will certainly remember happened just yesterday during the show build at 100% design, where I had a lovely exchange of glances with a bin man. He was removing rubbish from the exhibition hall while I, in his opinion, was bringing it straight back in again. He had an industrial bin full of discarded packing materials and wood, and I had a trolley full of discarded packing materials and an old, mildly rusting filing cabinet heading straight for the middle of the show. This collection of detritus was of course destined for The Working Title office, the hub and temporary headquarters of this festivals only live, self-produced publication. He was certainly confused.
So while you’re all enjoying your free beers and little sausages spare a thought for the people that made this event possible, along with all the confused contractors who are just doing their job.
by Edward Vince