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Anti-Design Festival

The ‘Anti-Design Festival’ was founded in 2010 by Brody and Research Studios to challenge the commercial focus of the London Design Festival and the contemporaneous cultural deep freeze resulting from a socio-political focus on quantitative criteria, reductions in UK public spending on culture, and restrictive effects on creative risk-taking. Catalysed by a central manifesto, the inaugural presentation of the Festival questioned the role of design and creative culture within society, particularly in view of the prevalent success culture of the recent past and the parallel rise of digital media.

The Festival was informed by research undertaken by Brody to identify key themes underpinning the programme, and documented by collaborator Dr Cecilia Wee, who also curated a Festival Salon featuring lectures and live performances. Focusing on key issues associated with anarchy, progress, people power, revolution, dangerous ideas, uprising, peace, protest, equality, passion, democracy and freedom, the Festival solicited new work produced without the imposition of market restrictions. Ten renowned practitioners, including Daniel Charny, James Payne, Harry Malt and Stuart Semple, were commissioned to lead areas of the Festival programme and produce new works. An open-submission route encouraged challenging, cheaply made and easily reproducible work that visitors could take and use as they considered appropriate.

Held in London from 18–26 September 2010 in ten venues, the Festival attracted over 20,000 visitors and was supported by Arts Council England, Taschen and Londonewcastle. Justin McGuirk commented in The Guardian (2010): ‘Design, the show was at pains to say, is not all about polished commodities, but also a sense of community, a raw creative energy’. The Festival featured leading practitioners, including Bazooka, Stefan Sagmeister, Jonathan Barnbrook, Yugo Nakamura, Morag Myerscough, Yomi Ayeni, Brandon Butterworth, Julius Weidemanns and Mark Moore, and was reviewed in The Telegraph, Design Week and on BBC Radio 4, amongst others.