South by Southwest London took over Shoreditch last week for a festival which established an exciting new model for London events, where business, tech and culture melded together in one sprawling celebration of diverse innovation.
The festival welcomed 20,505 pass-holders and saw an appearance by King Charles as he looked at the art installations at the festival. Mayor - and now Sir - Sadiq Khan accompanied His Majesty and commented “SXSW London has bought creativity, innovation and excitement to venues across Shoreditch. From inspiring talks to electric performances, the inaugural European edition of this world-renowned festival has shown why our capital is the leading city for creativity, talent and business. It has kicked off the biggest ever month for business and investment in London, as we build a more prosperous city for everyone.”
Ayesha Qureshi MBE who was instrumental in the London 2012 Olympics working across community engagement and planning compare the event to the Games, saying, “Just like the Olympics, SXSW London has sown the seed that it can be a catalytic event for the UK. The festival has had a tremendous impact in its first year alone and represents a huge opportunity for us in this country to be global innovation leaders. On the ground it also injected new diverse global audiences to buildings and venues in East London who desperately need the revenue streams. I walked up and down Brick Lane and spoke to local businesses who told me that they had experienced exponential increase in footfall. The promise of SXSW London as a ten-year stint also means we can continue to grow the halo effect the festival can have across the whole of the UK – marking the UK as unique leaders in global innovation.”
The festival featured appearances by the likes of Idris Elba, Sophie Turner and Katherine Ryan as well as talks on new tech and AI by the likes of Demis Hassabis, co-founder & CEO, Google DeepMind.
One of the partners, Canva, opened their office doors in Hoxton Square to the festival for talks and studio activations. Their Head of Europe, Duncan Clark, summed up the festival by saying, “At Canva we've seen a mega trend that everything is becoming more visual and that every person in every kind of organisation increasingly is acting like a publisher, communicating visually with an audience. That maps really closely to what South by Southwest has always done, bringing together different kinds of storytelling, whether that's in business or in culture more broadly.
We have been hosting a combination of panel events, talks, and hands-on experiences with the Canva product to design visual content. We've had an overwhelming response and it's been really exciting to see how people are enjoying mixing up experiences with business and technology with going to gigs and going to films and thinking of all these different layers of culture being interrelated. We've had people of all age brackets, all ethnicities, all genders coming and mingling together and experiencing all these different parts of culture.”
Well indeed, and one of the Standard’s key takeaways was that diverse mix of generations and industries which made it feel very inclusive and forward-thinking... how very London. See you there next year...
