Dame Sylvia Crowe Garden Free event: London Design Festival
In the Company of Worms, Fashion and Compost with Anciela
Join us in the museum garden for a celebration of fashion as an ecosystem with fashion brand Anciela as part of the London Design Festival 2025. Explore an interactive installation, take part in a conversation with regenerative designer Bonnie Carr and enjoy a performance by dancer Margherita Barbieri, all inspired by interspecies empathy.
Please note that the installation will also be available to visit in the garden on Tuesday 16 September, from 10:00 to 17:00.
Fashion brand Anciela invites you to step into an interactive installation in the Design Museum garden to become part of an evolving ecosystem of materials, organisms, and design.
Happening during the iconic London Design Festival and London Fashion Week, the installation explores regenerative principles shaped by multispecies collaboration and radical transparency.
The event includes an afternoon of conversation around composting and circular design with regenerative designer Bonnie Carr and a performance piece by dancer Margherita Barbieri inspired by interspecies empathy.
Crafted entirely from pre and post-consumer textile waste, the installation centres worm empathy and the unseen labour of decomposition, through compost-inspired soundscapes, composed from recordings of soil life and textile breakdown, inviting visitors to experience a deeper sensory reflection on systems of renewal, decay, and care beyond the human.
Through Digital Product Passports (DPPs) and Augmented Reality in collaboration with SmartDPP, every material and process is made visible, offering a fully traceable journey from waste to wearable, from soil to story.
Thursday 18 September Event Schedule:
16:00 – The event starts with a welcome and conversation with Anciela’s Creative Director Jennifer Droguet and Regenerative Designer Bonnie Carr
16:30 – Q&A
16:45 – Dance performance by Margherita Barbieri
Please note that the installation will be available to visit at our Dame Sylvia Crowe Garden on:
Tuesday 16 September: from 10:00 to 17:00
Thursday 18 September: from 10:30 to 12:30 and for the duration of the event
Please note:
This event is free but you must pre-book a ticket.
Collaborators
Bonnie is a Regenerative Designer with a passion for systems and fashion narratives. Nominated and shortlisted for LVMH Maison/0 Green Trail Prize and winner of Central Saint Martin's Jane Rapley Award Scholarship. Owner at Not For Archiving, a digital outerwear and materials archive and formerly from the Fashion Care and Repair economy. Design research–Reaching Fashion's Symbiocene is currently in place at the museum, focusing on 'more-than-human' approaches to a future of Fashion decomposition in cities.
Jennifer is a Colombian and Chilean Fashion Designer and Creative Director with 10 years of experience in luxury Fashion, specialising in sustainable, circular and regenerative design practices. She has worked at Viktor & Rolf, House of Holland and emerging designers such as Richard Malone and Phoebe English. Jennifer founded her brand, Anciela, in 2019, as a circular luxury womenswear label that celebrates South American folklore and experimental tailoring through the lens of migration and childhood memories.
Margherita is a British ballerina dancer, model, actress and fine artist of Italian and Middle Eastern decent. She is known for her talent in Ballet, but is also a skilled dancer in choreography, commercial dance, contemporary dance, lyrical dance, modern dance, pointe, pole dance, street dance, street jazz and zumba. As an actress, she is best known for her roles in Upside Down Rabbits, Love Sarah (2020) and Skylight, as well as for portraying series-regular Simone in Cottonwood's Spellbound (2023-) for Hulu.
Explore the 23rd edition of the London Design Festival, which celebrates and promotes London as the design capital of the world.
Book online
The Dame Sylvia Crowe Garden is located next to the museum building – follow the path on the right-hand side of the Main Entrance to the museum around the building. If you need any assistance, please ask a member of staff.
Please note that the garden is divided into two levels. The ground level is wheelchair accessible, but the upper level is accessed by stairs and unsuitable for wheelchairs. We apologise for this barrier.
This is a free event but you must pre-book online via the link below.
Initiated in partnership with the Design Age Institute in 2021, Growing Together explores design and horticulture as catalysts for positive social change and nurtures community connections in response to the planetary emergency.
'Growing Together' engages local residents to share stewardship of the Dame Sylvia Crowe garden at the Design Museum. The garden was named in memory of the pioneering landscape architect who designed the landscaping for the Commonwealth Institute in 1962.
See What's On
Background image: Courtesy of Anciela.
Sign up to our newsletter to be the first to know about upcoming exhibitions, events, and more.