Design Daze: August Events 2026
Design Daze Out: August Events 2026
This month’s Design Daze takes us from Carnival culture and Black British music to monumental sculpture, stop-motion animation and the next generation of creative talent. Different worlds, but all reminders of the same thing: inspiration rarely arrives while you are staring harder at your own screen.
The Legacy of Notting Hill Carnival
Notting Hill Carnival is usually experienced at full volume: feathers, food, sound systems and approximately three million people trying to find their friends.
This exhibition offers a chance to step back and see the creative history behind the spectacle.
Celebrating 60 years of Europe’s largest street festival, The Legacy of Notting Hill Carnival explores Carnival not simply as a brilliant party, but as an evolving expression of community, resistance and cultural identity.
13–21 August, Somerset House
Upgrade Yourself Festival 2026
In case you need another reason to go to Somerset House…
Now in its eighth edition, Upgrade Yourself Festival brings together emerging creatives aged 16 to 30 with artists, designers and industry experts through talks, workshops and practical sessions.
A festival built around access, exchange and useful advice, it’s a chance for those already working in design to listen to the people coming next. New talent does not simply need teaching. It usually has a few things to teach us too.
7–8 August, Somerset House
Anish Kapoor
For anyone working in design, Kapoor offers a useful nudge away from thinking only about what something looks like. What does it do to the space around it? How does it change as you move? What does the audience bring to the experience?
The Music Is Black: A British Story
The first major exhibition at the new V&A East Museum traces 125 years of Black music-making in Britain. Moving across four continents and more than a century of cultural history, it explores stories of excellence, struggle, resilience and joy, and the profound influence Black music has had on British life.
For designers, it offers a lesson in how identity forms over time. Not through one perfectly controlled message, but through hundreds of creative acts, borrowed references, local scenes and people making something new from what came before.
Throughout August, V&A East Museum
Inside Aardman: Wallace & Gromit and Friends
The exhibition explores the full filmmaking process and features familiar characters including Wallace and Gromit, Shaun the Sheep and Morph.
It is playful, certainly, but it is also a serious celebration of craft.
In a creative world increasingly preoccupied with speed, there is something reassuring about seeing what can happen when people take enormous care over very small movements. And yes, you may leave with a renewed appreciation for Gromit, who remains one of British cinema’s finest actors despite having no mouth.
