Colour Lab: from waste to value

Colour Lab returns to Switchboard Studios for London Design Festival 2026, the third iteration of a successful LDF programme in Waltham Forest, this year developed in research partnership with Chroma Waste Lab from Australia, and following colour from waste to value. A three-day, waste-to-studio experience of exhibition, open studio, and hands-on participatory sessions, tracing how post-consumer textiles become new pigments, dyes, and inks. Visitors encounter waste differently here, not as the end of a material's life, but as the beginning of its next one. The exhibition presents both the science and the design applications: what the pigment looks like, and how designers and makers could put it to work. Building on Colour Lab 2025's nature-to-studio journey, this year's programme moves from origins to futures, gathered around a central question: “What is the value in waste colour, and who in our community holds the knowledge to unlock it?”