Clerkenwell Design Week 2024 – The Aftermath

Furniture designers, Goldfinger, led a hugely popular workshop on making sculptural candlesticks from reclaimed wood off-cuts. Participants were delighted with their unusual, stacked candle holders and we’re sure you’ll encounter them at the best dinner parties, hereon. 

Non-alcoholic spirits producer, Everleaf, hosted a tasting alongside the Goldfinger session in a refreshing departure from the rivers of prosecco that normally accompany CDW.  

Rino Bedogni of Refin Ceramiche, Alex Holloway of Holloway Li, and Sam Frith of Solus took to the stage to introduce our installation, Laboratory. Rino explained how Laboratory was an attempt to communicate to the design community the unique selling point of Refin Ceramiche, its deep understanding of design and material. Sam told us how the project had come about and why he feels collaboration is powerful. Alex took us through the design process of the installation and gave us and insight into how it works. 

Tuesday was closed out by a performance from Big Dada and Ninja Tune label mates, Juice Aleem and DJ A La Fu. Kenny’s chopped up beats and Juice’s muscular flow won over a damp, Tuesday night crowd. One highlight was Juice freestyling to “Not Like Us” and rhyming it with Solus, another was Kenny dropping Ritmo Especial by Daniel Maloso and beating the crowd into delighted submission with relentless disco. “Can they do it on a cold, rainy night in Stoke?” Juice Aleem MC and A La Fu most certainly can. 

Narinder Sagoo MBE opened Wednesday with The Power of the Pen, a reflection upon the role that sketching has played in his life and how he believes it to be a powerful tool to unlock creativity and human potential. Narinder is the Art Director at Foster + Partners, and his deeply personal and moving presentation was a highlight of the week. We livestreamed the talk on Instagram and will be confirming its availability to watch later. 

Kate Ray is a forager and nature connection guide. Kate uses the art and science of foraging to help people recover an innate connection with the natural world, something from which we could all benefit. She served guests a mouth-watering array of food made from foraged ingredients and spoke about her company Guided Wellbeing. 

We hosted a panel of experts who discussed the topic Photography and the Moving Image as an Agent for Change. Joi Lee, Head of Editorial at Earthrise, told us how her work amplifies stories around the climate crisis. She demonstrated how media is channelled and ‘sanitised’ of distressing imagery around the crisis and explained why this is problematic. She proposed a positive and human-centric approach to messaging that nonetheless acknowledged the existential threat of anthropogenic climate change. 

Documentary filmmaker and photographer Zed Nelson took us through four of his projects that examined various social dysfunctions. Gun culture, body modification, gentrification, and climate change were all explored, as he accompanied his visual essays with commentary and additional information. His approach was clinical, leaving editorial to occur in the minds of the audience. Such was the power of the imagery that a clear position was apparent. His film The Street can be seen here.

Gary Wallis told us about the work he does with the photographers of tomorrow at Central St Martins. One piece of coursework invites students to produce work that incorporates a ‘flaw’ or ‘fault’ in the photographic technique. This was interpreted variously and quite brilliantly by his students as they investigated body dysmorphia, queerness, and otherness in a series of startling images that were a testament not only to the creativity of the students but also the mentoring of their teacher. 

Plumm, who performed for us last year during Sounds of the Earth, made a triumphant return alongside Hen D. With Hen providing trance-inducing beats, Plumm extemporised vocals, lifting refrains from Róisín Murphy, Nina Simone, and Lady Day, waving her jazz flag high to the delight of the audience. The duo created an electric atmosphere and festivities continued late into the night and early morning. 

Thursday dawned to a chorus of plink, plink, fizz, as we welcomed Annabelle Breakenridge of Crafty Jezebels who led a terrazzo workshop. Participants were able to create their own terrazzo hexagons live in the showroom to take home and enjoy. This was a serendipitous booking as Solus’ own terrazzo range, made from materials reclaimed from demolished buildings had been getting a lot of attention during the festival. 

Chef Roberta and her Pasta Evangelists arrived to convert the crowd to the sensual joys of making your own pasta. They then drove home the message with bowls and bowls of the delicious stuff. 

Our panel convened to discuss the topic, “Experimental Design for a Brighter Future”. Caroline Till of Franklin Till warned us of the perils of dialling back on sustainability strategies and reiterated that it was not a ‘nice to have’ but rather an essential. She invited us to imagine a happy future rather than a dystopia so that we had a clear target at which to aim. Caroline shared much of her work, one highlight of which was the exhibition Our Time On Earth shown at the Barbican, which aimed to place human life within an ecological perspective and planetary timeframe. 

Alex Holloway of Holloway Li told us about the importance of experimentation in his design practice, drawing upon the Laboratory installation as an immediate example. He focussed upon his experimental approach to materials and gave a fascinating example of a material with the appearance of concrete from which he makes sofas. 

Catrina Stewart of Office S&M talked about her work with both public and private sectors. She gave an example of community focussed work at an underpass in Bruce Grove in Haringey. On this project, her practice ran workshops with the residents around themes that the community wanted to see in a mural. They then worked with local artists to deliver the work. Catrina emphasised the transformative power of colour in placemaking. 

As this was happening, a queue was forming along St. John Street accompanied by a discernible hubbub. Excitement was building for our concluding performance from none other than Daniel Avery. How we managed to book this era-defining electronic music producer and DJ is a secret only Jo Sinclair knows, but as the opening bars of Avery’s remix of 58500 by Enfant Sauvage dropped and the crowd leapt with joy, it was clear we were in for a special night… 

And rightly so, after a sensational week of culture, conversation, and community. Solus had done it again, definitively staking its claim on the heart of design week, elevating the whole event, and showing the community what is possible when you bring together great food, great art, and great minds. How are we going to top it? Find out next year.