The annual DESIGN Canberra Festival has announced highlights for its ninth edition, unveiling an expansive program featuring more than 200 events that will be presented across the nation’s capital celebrating it as a global city of design, spanning two weeks from 2 until 20 November 2022. Presented by Craft ACT: Craft + Design Centre, DESIGN Canberra 2022 explores the theme of Transformation, inviting audiences to speculate on how we might transform our city, our community and our world through design and creative practice.

With a program comprising talks, tours, exhibitions, public art installations, workshops and symposiums, DESIGN Canberra highlights in 2022 include keynote speeches by authors Elizabeth Farrelly and Tony Fry, as well as by artists Blanche Tilden and Tom Moore; an exhibition celebrating contemporary Italian design; open studio access to more than 77 Canberra-based artists and designers; public art installations; architecture talks and tours; hands-on ‘nurture’ making workshops; and a Bauhaus influenced exhibition of light works.

Canberra sculptor Lucy Irvine – whose work transforms the traditional craft practice of weaving into sculptural installations – has been named the 2022 designer-in-residence for DESIGN Canberra 2022, creating a signature work, ‘The Stills’ for the Festival, responding to the theme of Transformation.

Image: Lucy Irvine, The Stills, DESIGN Canberra 2022 signature artwork. Photo Lean Timms.