Above: Youth Led Workshops at Blackhorse Workshop (image credit Chloe Rosser)
Blackhorse Creates presents a weekend of design, craft and making across Blackhorse Collective Creative Enterprise Zone as part of London Design Festival and Open House Festival 2026.
Between Thursday 17 and Sunday 20 September 2026, makers and creatives are opening their doors, showing you behind-the-scenes and sharing their creative practices, businesses and journeys. This is a rare opportunity to meet the makers, explore creative opportunities in the area and try your hand at making.
The 2026 programme celebrates design and manufacturing excellence, showcases the area's rich creative life, and places particular emphasis on opportunities for young people to access skills, careers and pathways into the creative industries.
Blackhorse Creates is delivered in partnership by Blackhorse Workshop, a social enterprise dedicated to making and Blackhorse Collective Waltham Forest’s Creative Enterprise Zone, designated by the Mayor of London since 2021.
The weekend begins with a Panel Talk on Thursday 17 September at Switchboard Studios, featuring artists, makers and businesses who are currently supporting the next generation of local creatives into creative employment.
Creative businesses will open their doors for local schools, colleges and alternative provisions giving local young people a day in the life of, hands-on making experience and employment tips and tricks on Friday 18 September, featuring insights into architecture and the built environment from Office Sian, Heritage Crafts from Alfred Dunhill Ltd, Fashion Design from Buttress & Snatch and much more.
Saturday 19 September and Sunday 20 September will feature creative workshops. Young people will be bringing their skills, energy and perspective to deliver workshops, giving employment opportunities and creative experience to local young people. Come and join a workshop in puppet making at Blackhorse Workshop, photobatik at Walthamstow Wetlands or create concrete poetry with Turner Prize winning Artist Jasleen Kaur and the Young People of Higham Hill Hub at Big Penny Social.
Chroma Waste Lab x Colour of Saying will be sharing global material research on waste-derived pigments, from waste to value through an exhibition, workshops and drop-in swatching sessions at Switchboard Studios.
Signal to Noise will be showcasing ‘Collider’ at Big Penny Social, a mixed reality sound installation that blends spatial music creation, immersive soundscapes and tactile digital interaction.
Blackhorse Workshop will be opening the doors to its maker spaces and studios and presenting ‘We Lift Each Other’ an exhibition showcasing the range of practices that make and create in the studios and open access workshops.
Discover the skills behind making processes with a special edition of Blackhorse Workshops Queer Metal Club and demonstrations of the heritage craft of Blacksmithing.
Sound artist Marianna Glykofridi will present an interactive sound installation at Blackhorse Workshop, part of ‘Imprints of Being’, this layered soundscape captures the changing rhythms, people, and activity of the workshop.
Find out more on social media and the Blackhorse Workshop website for the full programme.
London Design Festival
Taking place 12 to 20 September 2026, London Design Festival celebrates and promotes London as the design capital of the world. London Design Festival has earned the reputation as a key calendar moment of London’s autumn creative season, alongside London Fashion Week, Frieze Art Fair and the London Film Festival, attracting the greatest thinkers, practitioners, retailers and educators to the capital, in a citywide celebration.
Open House Festival
Open House Festival is a London-wide festival that opens up and celebrates the city’s architecture, special places and neighbourhoods, with free open days and events taking place across all 33 London boroughs. This year, the festival will take place from 12 to 20 September. The festival’s mission is to provide access to spaces that wouldn’t otherwise be open, to create opportunities for learning from and about the built environment and one another, and to celebrate London and the communities that make it.
Open House Festival is run by Open City, a charity dedicated to making architecture and neighbourhoods more open, accessible and equitable.