Supporting London's design industry

The Mayor of London supports design as part of his Creative Economy Growth Programme. Simone Brewster was commissioned for an outdoor installation as part of the London Design Festival in 2023. 

About Simone Brewster

A London-based multidisciplinary artist, designer, educator and cultural change-maker, Simone Brewster uncovers the power in everyday objects through her craft.  

Studying architecture as an undergraduate, and later completing a master's in Design Products, she talks about coming back full circle to her true passions. “I went to Royal College of Art to continue making and the idea was to go back and continue architecture, but I just enjoyed design too much.”  

Working with London Design Festival

Brewster partnered with cork brand Amorim on ‘Spirit of Place’, her outdoor installation for London Design Festival 2023. The work represents Amorim's cork forest in Herdade de Rio Frio, Portugal. “They're this family-run, carbon negative business in the cork industry. Sounds insane, right? Not just carbon neutral, but carbon negative. They were replanting and trying to expand our forests, doing all of these things that are essential for the health of the local agriculture. When I went out there, it completely changed my perspective.” 

London Design Festival supported Simone over a one-year process to bring the sculptures to life. Travelling with her six-month-old son, Simone visited the cork forest on the estate of Herdade de Rio Frio and left with a renewed sense of creative direction. “I wanted to make objects that give me an opportunity to talk about the important work Amorim are doing.”  

This became the entry point for her designs in ‘Spirit of Place’. Taking on the four pillars of the work in the forest, these were used and expressed in a family of five large, colourful cork sculptures – with the largest reaching 2.5 metres height. “Cork has all of these inherent natural qualities that are beneficial to the environment, and to the spaces that they're going to be in.” 

London Design Festival is supported by the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan as part of his Creative Economy Growth Programme. It provides an international platform for ideas and innovations coming from the best talent and businesses, as well as emerging voices and educators, across the capital and the UK. In 2023, the festival welcomed 540,000 visitors across a nine-day programme of events, installations and activities. Showcased at Strand Aldwych between 16 September and 8 October 2023, ‘Spirit of Place’ was among the new commissions created especially for the 2023 festival, which also included exhibitions, open studios, showrooms and product launches – garnering 1.7m visits in 13 different locations across the city. 

Reaching new international audiences

Reaching new international audiences helped boost Simone’s visibility, shining an even brighter spotlight on her unique, multi-faceted artistic lens. "It gave me the opportunity to evidence, on a very public space, the true capability of my practice. How I can work at small and larger scales. How I can bring together a lot of the other influences and mediums in my work.”  

As an artist, Brewster defies categorisation – residing everywhere and nowhere at once between the realms of sculpture, furniture and object-making to painting and jewellery. “My body of work is truly like a lifetime acquisition. It's literally something that I'm continuing to work on all the time,” she says.  

Following her showcasing at the festival, Simone was featured in the New York Times, with additional interest for ‘Spirit of Place’ to tour to other countries. What her practice attempts to achieve, however, comes back a lot closer to home. “It's been a journey of creating pieces that appreciate and celebrate this specific heritage that I have, which is Caribbean-African heritage, but from London. So, it's bringing in not just one ingredient, but loads. All that influence and appreciation comes out in the work.”  

‘Spirit of Place’ has since travelled to Canary Wharf and its five colourful sculptures can now be seen across the boardwalk in Harbour Quay Gardens, in Wood Wharf. “It had a really good response from the public” she says. “Since I've shown that project, I've had quite a lot of people approaching to work with me. It just raised my profile to the next level.” 

Design in London and beyond

On what gives London its creative edge, Simone says: “There's always a lot going on in the design world. It's hard to keep up with all the different projects, innovations and interesting ideas that are out there. There really is great work everywhere.” A key aim for the London Design Festival is to facilitate discovery, encouraging people to explore parts of the city and types of activities that may be less familiar to them.  

A key consideration in both Simone’s work and the industry at large at present is sustainability. “We often think of sustainability as not using a certain set of materials, right? So, people say ‘I'm sustainable because I don't use plastic’ or ‘because I source all of my wood from sustainable forests’. “Sustainability isn't just about the materials you use. It's about the longevity of a piece that you create. It's about your work never entering the waste cycle in the equation of products,” she says. 

“The main way that I think about sustainability now is just to create pieces that are aiming to be timeless,” she continues. “So rather than it being thrown away or entering a skip, the value of the object is intrinsically more, and therefore it becomes sustainable.” 

Simone notes there are positive trends developing, which speak to a more inclusive and equitable future in the design world. “The traditional gatekeepers are not as empowered as they were in the past. Now, you can post your work on social media. You can connect with people on the other side of the world and get your work out there. It's more democratic in that you can access stuff easier.  

It also makes for more immediate and interesting responses to your work. That's really inspiring and it's to be taken advantage of as much as possible. We no longer have to wait for big museums or big galleries to champion us. The power is in the hands of the creative.” 

Simone's tips for upcoming artists

She has three top tips for emerging artists. “Take your work seriously, and you're looking at a lifelong career. Take time to nurture your creativity and talent. If you create one good piece of work a year, you'll have an amazing body of work by the end of that span.” 

“Get a job, any job – within the creative field or not,” she continues. “Release that pressure from your practice. Don't underestimate what you're learning here. It will give you brain space to approach your work in a way that isn't in panic mode about your rent or bills. And always advocate to get paid properly. Treat it like a long-term gain, because it's a long-term game.”