Every four years, the Society of British Theatre Designers (SBTD) organises an exhibition to celebrate UK theatre design. It’s taken different forms – there’s always some form of physical exhibition – often one big one, but past iterations have included variations such as smaller regional projects and a digital exhibition. There’s always some kind of catalogue, sometimes digital but normally beautiful, collectable books that continue to be bought by students, theatre-lovers and others, long after the exhibition itself has closed.
This time around it’s called design | stage, and there’ll be an exhibition in Coventry early in 2027 accompanied by an events programme, plus a printed catalogue. As always, the exhibition itself will be a really special event; there’s nothing else like it, representing the range of theatre design in the country, and open to all practising designers. You have to be a member of SBTD, but you can join today and be part of this year’s exhibition.
But there’s another reason we’re excited. Two of our leadership team – Kira and Paul – are job-sharing the role of sustainability lead for the project. Working with team member Valentina Miranda, they are producing guidance for exhibitors on how to make their exhibits as green as possible, supporting the exhibition designer and organisers to maximise the project’s environmental sustainability, and documenting its impact in terms of both circularity (that’s reuse, etc.) and carbon emissions.
But… time is ticking. If you’re a theatre designer and haven’t submitted work yet, you have till the end of this month. So, everyone in the sector, please, please spread the word. We don’t want any heartbroken designers realising they’ve missed out because they didn’t know! The call-out is here.
The pictures are from the SBTD’s Staging Places exhibition at the V&A in 2019/20 and Hub Sleaford in 2020, and Make Believe, at Nottingham Trent and the Gibberd Gallery, Harlow, in 2015.
