Between Friday 5th and Thursday 11th June 2009 @ The Old Firestation, The Lanes, Tobacco Factory, Photographique, Jamaica Street Studios, The Architecture Centre, King Street Studios and everywhere in between, Bristol

Bristol Design Festival has only been going for three years and what’s most impressive is just how large it’s become it that time and how ingrained in is in the Bristol festival calendar. The sheer amount of design based events they put on, were aligned with and supported over this June week was nothing short of staggering; there were thirty venues, yes…thirty!, on the Design Trail  in the creation of biggest Bristol Design Festival yet.

First port of call for anyone wanting to attend the festival had to be this year’s base at The Old Firestation on Silver Street. Inside the building’s striking entrance were endless corridors and rooms showing off work from over 100 different individual designers, businesses and agencies, be it product design, fashion, future, art, sculpture and anything and everything else, as well as the ever popular Grafikea exhibit. The Grafikiea competition simply encouraged the public to redesign an Ikea coffee table and this year’s results were as weird, wonderful and memorable as ever. The range of design talent on show at The Old Firestation was the most impressive element and people spent hours wondering through all the buildings nooks and crannies, taking it all in.

Just up the road, The Lanes was hosting 40 final year UWE Creative Product Design students and their year pieces. It was really interesting chatting away with the students about their ideas and designs, from the very clever to the very crazy, though it was a shame they were effectively hidden away upstairs in, what has to be said, felt like a dingy, scabby attic. It would have been nice to see them displaying in the main venue or at least in the actual Lanes venue with some vaguely human surroundings!

Other highlights included the Robert Hunters’ illustrations at Photographique, and the fabulous Matryoshka Army exhibition in the King Street Studios where local artists and designers were asked to personalise a range of russian dolls in the creation of an army! The dolls on show ranged from the touching to the hilarious and the simplicity of the exhibit was really nice and well executed.

With all this stuff going on as part of the Bristol Design Festival and a fantastic little brochure listing it all in a Design Trail you can follow, I felt privileged to be in the middle of it all! Good old Bristol.

www.bristoldesignfestival.com

Matthew Whittle www.matthewwhittleblog.blogspot.com
Photos by www.ianbradleyphotography.com

In Pictures – Grafikea 2009