The School of Life, London, has introduced two tours set to inspire over the next few months. Back by popular demand, renowned interior designer, Ilse Crawford, will be leading a day tour of what she believes makes good design. In addition, art historian and broadcaster, Dan Cruikshank, will take participants to the East End to visit a range of designer-makers.
A Day of Good Design with Ilse Crawford, Sunday 20th April
Ilse Crawford’s design studio is celebrated for creating objects, environments, and experiences that are designed to enhance life and enable us to thrive.
Ilse has designed a day tour, which she will also lead, to give participants a unique opportunity to explore what makes good design. She will explain how good design can connect with our senses and emotions, and how design can tap into our basic human drives for survival, safety, love, respect and self-fulfilment. The tour will also explore how good design can shift our relationship with our environments.
The tour will include a visit to Studioilse to find out how Ilse’s team works, as well as a choice of designed spaces to meet experts who will discuss how design affects our moods, thoughts and actions.
Designer-Makers of the East End with Dan Cruikshaw, Saturday 11th May and Saturday 27th July
This tour is an excursion behind the scenes in London’s oldest hive of designer-makers to discover why the area is such a hotbed of creative endeavour. The day-long tour will take participants from a private Spitalfields home, where 17th-century Huguenot weavers spun their famous silks, to the studios of cutting-edge design collectives who are reinventing traditional practices for the future.
Participants will meet independent makers and designers in their studios, who will display their making processes and talk about the philosophies that drive them. Participants also have a chance to try their hand at a couple of the studio techniques for themselves.
The tour is co-curated and led by Sarah Douglas from Limited Space. Hosts will include Dan Cruickshank; designer and maker of bespoke shoes, Sebastian Tarek; Graham Bignell from New North Letterpress; and ceramics maker, Stuart Carey.
In between studio visits, the tour will break for a picnic lunch in the kitchen of an original Spitalfields weaver’s workshop, now the home and gallery of a respected antiques dealer. Participants will have the opportunity to tour the private house above the gallery, hear about its history and sample cakes baked to an old Huguenot recipe.
