Dates: 18th - 22nd September
Times: Mon. - Fri. 8 am - 5 pm
Price: Free
Special event opening times:
Enamel Jewellery making workshop: Sat. 16th, 1 pm - 4 pm (booking required)
Late night opening: Thurs. 21st, 6:30 pm - 9 pm (booking required)
Yarn Sale & weaving demonstration: Sat 24th, 10 am - 2 pm. (Free, please RSVP)
Hotel Elephant is pleased to present Creative Elephant, a program of events and workshops celebrating the creative and design talents of our studio members for the London Design Festival and Urban Elephant Festival. The program will include a group exhibition of artwork and objects from our members, including textiles, fashion, fine art and jewellery. The exhibition is free to attend and will run for the duration of the festival. Exhibiting artists include;
Sara Chyan is a jewellery artist who explores the unique properties of bismuth to create one-of-a-kind pieces. Sara Chyan founded her brand in 2018 based on the bismuth project she began while studying for her Master's in Jewellery & Metal at the Royal College of Art. The project has already won numerous international awards and has been featured in several high-profile magazines.
Bismuth is a rare metal with a very low melting point and a high boiling point, and as a result, it can be used to create a wide variety of shapes and colours. Sara combines bismuth with other materials in her work. By manipulating the metal's temperature, she can produce a wide range of colours, from deep blues to vibrant greens. One colour reflects the different temperatures the metal has burned at. In addition, the geometric shapes that she creates are unlike anything that has ever been seen before. As a result, her work is truly mesmerising and one-of-a-kind.
Tihara Smith is the founder of a fashion, accessories, and lifestyle brand inspired by the vibrant Caribbean and the Windrush Generation. She is a proud graduate of the University for the Creative Arts Epsom, where she honed her design skills and showcased her Windrush-inspired graduate collection at Graduate Fashion Week 2018. One of the outfits from this collection was acquired by the Museum of London in 2021. As the winner of Start-Up with Seven Dials, she had the incredible opportunity to host a pop-up shop on Neal Street in the same year. Her products are now stocked in independent shops across the UK, in Bermuda, and the British Virgin Islands, including the National Theatre and Museum of London Docklands. As a creative entrepreneur, she is passionate about design, the Caribbean and sharing the Windrush story. She strives to create distinctive pieces that allow people to have a little piece of the Caribbean. She is dedicated to creating high-quality products that not only look great but also tell a story, and that are as sustainable as she can make possible. Thiara will be exhibiting one of her beautiful denim and embroidery jackets as part of the Creative Elephant exhibition.
Mairi Gillies is a textile specialist and hand weaver based in London. Originally getting into textiles at a young age, it was during her BA Hons degree in woven textile design at Central Saint Martins where she found her love for weaving.
Mairi has worked as a freelance designer across both sectors of interior and fashion textiles, including exhibiting her woven textiles during London Fashion Week and having her textiles featured in ELLE UK. Her achievements have been recognised by The Heritage Craft Association, shortlisting her to the top 3 for the Young Weaver of the Year Award.
Keeping sustainable practices at the heart of everything she does, Mairi utilises repurposed materials within her weaving. Working with the ethos of ‘not needing to buy new to create new’, Mairi produces textiles of bold colour and texture which convey experimental play and communicative storytelling through woven material.
Rushda Shah
Rushda works with oil, acrylic and decoupage. She is currently working on paintings and objects charting her family’s journey from India to Africa and then to the UK. The sort of journey taken by so many working for the British Empire and now residing here. For Creative Elephant she will be exhibiting a collection of decoupage vases from this collection of works.
16th - 24th September
Various times and locations across the city, please see their website more for details.
London Design Festival celebrates and promotes the city as a design capital on a global stage.
London Design Festival was launched by Sir John Sorrell CBE and Ben Evans CBE in 2003. Building on London’s existing design activity, their concept was to create an annual event that would promote the city’s creativity, drawing in the country’s greatest thinkers, practitioners, retailers and educators to deliver an unmissable celebration of design. The launch of the first Festival took place at Bloomberg on 25 March 2003, with a show of support from design, education, government and London organisations. 20 years later, this vision remains ever strong.
About Southwark Design District
16th - 24th September
Various activities across Southwark, please see their website for more details.
A hyperlocal design destination showcasing one of the most vibrant and creative communities in London. The district sets out to formalise and create a new and fresh take on the London design scene around the meandering neighbourhoods of Old Kent Road, Camberwell, Peckham, Elephant and Castle and surrounding areas.
They celebrate the local designers, makers and creators who work, live and play in the area through diverse design happenings. Southwark has long been a home for those with an appreciation for design. They diversify the meaning of design and make it accessible to everyone. They connect our community, culture, education and enterprise to bring about a local and sustainable creative economy.
15th - 17th September
Various times and locations, please Urban Elephant Festival for more information.
An exciting and innovative free community arts festival in Elephant and Castle, South East London.
