Materials: A Festival of Visual Culture and Politics
Saturday, September 12, 2026 · 10:00 AM – 9:00 PM
Join us at Pelican House for the second Materials Festival, where we explore visual and spatial practices as a force for radical imagination and transformative social change.
The theme for this year is embedded practice: what does it mean to develop a creative practice that is genuinely embedded in a place or community? How can we organise with our neighbours, colleagues and friends to respond to our shared material struggles? And what is our vision of the “good life” that we’re all building towards?
We’ll start the day at 10am, with free snacks and a pay-what-you-can lunch. Bookworkers and Beyond will be running a Publishing Fair, and we’ll be displaying London’s Ours, an exhibition of visual materials from the Greater London Council 1981–1986. After 6pm we’ll have a special performance by Circle Dance and a social with drinks and music.
Conversations
Multitudes
Migrants in Culture
Common Knowledge
Lola Olufemi
Sarah Stein Lubrano
Unit 38
House of Annetta
Case studies
Slow + Dirty Press
FAT Studio
Wards Corner Community Plan
Tottenham Family Fight Back
Workshops
Artists & Culture Workers
Autonomous Design Group
Cooperation Town
Section of Architectural Workers
The Department of Information & Propaganda
The People’s Prop Department
workers.coop
Bookworkers & Beyond Publishing Fair
BOOKS
F.A.T. Studio
Migrants in Culture
PageMasters
Slow + Dirty Press
Sticky Fingers Publishing
and more to be confirmed!
Open studios with Pelican residents
Common Knowledge
Migrants in Culture
Unit 38
Plus!
Circle Dance presents: Neither Albion Nor Britannia
London's Ours! A GLC Exhibition
Collective art marking with the London School of Solarpunk
Bethnal Green walking tours
Free childcare for children over 5
Organised by Common Knowledge and Unit 38, with support from the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung and Pelican House.
All profits from ticket sales will be distributed between our speakers. Email us if you're unwaged and would like come — no one turned away for lack of funds.
The theme for this year is embedded practice: what does it mean to develop a creative practice that is genuinely embedded in a place or community? How can we organise with our neighbours, colleagues and friends to respond to our shared material struggles? And what is our vision of the “good life” that we’re all building towards?
We’ll start the day at 10am, with free snacks and a pay-what-you-can lunch. Bookworkers and Beyond will be running a Publishing Fair, and we’ll be displaying London’s Ours, an exhibition of visual materials from the Greater London Council 1981–1986. After 6pm we’ll have a special performance by Circle Dance and a social with drinks and music.
Conversations
Multitudes
Migrants in Culture
Common Knowledge
Lola Olufemi
Sarah Stein Lubrano
Unit 38
House of Annetta
Case studies
Slow + Dirty Press
FAT Studio
Wards Corner Community Plan
Tottenham Family Fight Back
Workshops
Artists & Culture Workers
Autonomous Design Group
Cooperation Town
Section of Architectural Workers
The Department of Information & Propaganda
The People’s Prop Department
workers.coop
Bookworkers & Beyond Publishing Fair
BOOKS
F.A.T. Studio
Migrants in Culture
PageMasters
Slow + Dirty Press
Sticky Fingers Publishing
and more to be confirmed!
Open studios with Pelican residents
Common Knowledge
Migrants in Culture
Unit 38
Plus!
Circle Dance presents: Neither Albion Nor Britannia
London's Ours! A GLC Exhibition
Collective art marking with the London School of Solarpunk
Bethnal Green walking tours
Free childcare for children over 5
Organised by Common Knowledge and Unit 38, with support from the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung and Pelican House.
All profits from ticket sales will be distributed between our speakers. Email us if you're unwaged and would like come — no one turned away for lack of funds.
By Materials