Digital Design Weekend returns to V&A South Kensington from 18–20 September, bringing together artists, designers, technologists and creative communities for three days of free installations, performances, workshops, talks and hands-on experiences.
The festival creates a space to encounter new and emerging forms of digital art and design, connecting audiences and practitioners through conversation, experimentation and creative participation.
This year, Once Upon A Garden by Linda Dounia is the lead project, presented as part of London Design Festival. This display offers a speculative archive of critically endangered and extinct flora from the Sahel, exploring memory, loss and the role of technology in imagining what has disappeared.
The work speaks to some of the questions running through this year’s festival, exploring how creative technologies are reshaping how we think about ecology, care and community, and asking what more responsible and resilient digital futures might look like.
Ecology, care and responsibility
In The Soil Sounds Back, Emily Stapleton-Jefferis invites visitors to place their hands into soil and hear echoes of the living ecosystem normally found within it, drawing attention to soil degradation and ecological loss. Shinji Toya’s Microbial Feral Computing approaches ecology through a solarpunk lens, experimenting with soil-based bio-batteries and low-energy computers to consider alternative ways of thinking about computing infrastructure.
The theme of care moves from the ecological to the interpersonal throughout the weekend. Soothing Sounds by Dr Paulina Yurman explores the sound strategies used by parents, caregivers and babies, while Maria Than’s Please Come Back Tomorrow considers compassion through the experience of navigating complex bureaucratic systems.
Care can also mean recognising experiences that are often overlooked. In The Baby Factory is Closed, Deepa Mann-Kler uses multisensory virtual reality to open up conversations about menopause and how it is experienced and understood.
The themes of care and responsibility also extend to AI. Nathan David Smith’s Large Language Machine reveals the hidden structures shaping chatbot responses, while the Lumen Prize conversation The Age of Responsibility: Rethinking Digital Futures asks how artists might approach creative technology with greater care, stewardship and accountability.
Connecting creative communities
Digital Design Weekend is also a chance to connect different parts of the creative technology sector.
Our Creative Technology Social: Voices from the London community gathers artists, producers and organisers from across London’s creative technology scene. Together, they discuss the communities and spaces that sustain their work, the challenges they face, and how greater exchange and collaboration might help the sector become more accessible and sustainable.
Alongside this, the festival gives emerging practitioners opportunities to share their work with wider audiences through showcases by students from the Computational Arts programme at Goldsmiths University of London, and the Royal College of Art MA Information Experience Design.
From audiences to participants
Participation is always central to Digital Design Weekend. The festival provides a platform where visitors can make, play and experiment with technology, while also questioning and reflecting on how it shapes society and everyday life.
This year you can make algorithmic music with Nadezhda Khalid, create live visuals with Mike Cook, build a fabric synthesiser with Lia Mice or learn how to make a compost-powered bio-battery with Shinji Toya. You can also join Arcade Social, a showcase of collaborative games that bring people together through play and conversation.
With Glyph Yourself!, Jane Lee invites visitors to use their bodies to invent new typographic forms, which are then archived and printed as a collective zine. The Computer Arts Society and Genetic Moo offer opportunities to get involved in making computer art, drawing inspiration from the field’s early experiments and techniques.
These are just some of the many ways to get involved across the weekend. Together, these activities move between coding and music, electronics and textiles, movement and graphic design, offering different routes into creative technology and encouraging visitors to explore their own creative expression.
Digital Design Weekend takes place at V&A South Kensington from Friday 18 to Sunday 20 September 2026. All activities are free, and no tickets are required unless otherwise specified.