The Global Design Forum returned from 12-14 September to the V&A South Kensington's Lydia and Manfred Gorvy Lecture Theatre.

This year's forum was guest-curated by Rhiarna Dhaliwal and supported by Strategic Partner MixZ, Programme Partners Shenzhen Media Group, Bowmore and Sun Media Group, and Session Partners FLORA, LEPAS, and L-Acoustics.

The theme of this year’s edition was Worlds in Motion. Design is in constant circulation, moving across cultures, disciplines and geographies, and few cities are as shaped by the circulation of people, ideas and cultures as London.

This year’s Global Design Forum programme explored design as a process of exchange – of ideas, cultures and knowledge. Across three days of keynotes, conversations and panels, it brought together leading voices from London and beyond, spanning a range of creative disciplines, to explore how the exchange of ideas catalyses new ways of making and imagining the future. The programme used London as a lens through which to examine how questions emerging here resonate far beyond, revealing design as a practice shaped by technological change, ecological transformation and cultural exchange. 

From speculative design and emerging technologies to sensory experience, spatial practice, material culture, ecological thinking and contemporary craft, the programme explored how moments of translation and friction can generate new forms of thinking, making and living. At a time when political, technological and ecological crises are rapidly reshaping how we live and relate to one another, Global Design Forum considers design as a means of negotiating complexity, whilst embracing exchange and coexistence as the foundations for shaping design futures.

Highlights included talks from Es Devlin CBE, Anab Jain, Asif Khan MBE, Liam Young and Natalie Melton. The curated talks programming is free to attend.