Community festival Camden Inspire is back for its fifth year on Saturday 26 & Sunday 27 September, taking over Camden Collective with a free, sprawling weekend of talks, workshops and hands-on making, all under the climate-focused theme, Gathering for Our Future.
After five heatwaves hit London this summer alone, the festival’s headline project will be a community-built “Guerilla Shading” pavilion, a huge multi-sail canopy going up live in the garden across the weekend with architect Owen Pearce. Drop in on Saturday (12:00–18:00) to help build it, then come back to naturally dye the sails themselves with artist Auda Sakho, offering a rare opportunity to learn shade-building skills you can take home to your own street or garden.
Two key panel discussions
- Power in Numbers: Grassroots Action Starts at Home – Saturday, 12:30–14:00, Auction Rooms, free (book ahead). Community organisers Kareem Dayes (Rural Urban Synthesis Society), Sirraj Mitha (Open City) and Dan Edelstyn (Power Station) get into what it actually takes to build community-led housing, growing spaces and neighbourhood energy co-ops from the ground up.
- Building the World We Want: Activism Beyond Borders – Saturday, 16:00–17:30, Auction Rooms, free (book ahead). A heavyweight line-up, chaired by Guardian climate journalist Damien Gayle, of Indy Johar (co-founder, Dark Matter Labs), climate justice campaigner and author Tori Tsui, and Dr Apolline Roger (Head of Innovation Lab, ClientEarth) on the legal battles, design breakthroughs and activism actually shifting what’s politically possible.
The rest of the programme breaks down into three strands:
MAKE
A full craft programme in the School Hall, including Kintsugi china repair with Dotty by Design, mosaic-making with Debra Collis, Japanese sashiko mending with CSM’s Tamsin Lines, kantha blanket-making with Shama Kun, and book-binding from sweet wrappers and paper offcuts with Kami Paper (all Saturday, £3–£5).
DO
Hands-on and mostly drop-in. Build and dye the shade sails (Sat), forage round Camden with sustainable restaurant Silo before building a basket from reclaimed materials with STORE Projects (Sun, £5), turn collected plastic litter picked from the Regent’s Canal into new objects with Are You Mad? (Sat, free), learn food growing with Global Generation (Sun, free), or fix a broken lamp at the Fixing Factory’s Lamp Lab (Sat, £3).
DISCUSS
Beyond the two headline panels: a live youth podcast from Transmission Roundhouse recording across both days (free, drop in), Poetry in the Park (Sun, free) and a practical funding workshop with Camden Giving’s Head of Grants for anyone with a climate project idea (Sat morning, free).
For families
Kids aged 8+ can get properly stuck into Kids Natural Printing with Grace Parker & Up to Earth (Saturday, 15:00–17:00, £3), making their own cyanotype prints from natural materials while talking climate in kid-friendly terms. There’s also a kids’ theatre and further creative activities running across the weekend for younger festival-goers.
Material Futures at Central Saint Martins will be exhibiting climate-conscious design objects, such as a buildable coppice timber structure, eel bridges made from oyster shell waste, ‘living pigments’ to replace toxic chemicals in the fashion industry and moss-grown tartan. There will also be a low-carbon community feast and an evening of climate-themed pub quiz and DJs.
Simon Pitkeathley, CEO, Camden Town Unlimited
“Camden Inspire really shows off the spirit of the community we have here in Camden. The festival is all about bringing people together and thinking seriously but responding creatively and enthusiastically to the climate emergency, and we very much look forward to hosting so many fantastic organisations & welcoming back so many of our local audience”
The details
- Camden Collective, Buck Street / Hawley Infants site, Camden
- Saturday 26 – Sunday 27 September 2026
- Free entry, some workshops ticketed (£3–£5)
- Full programme and bookings: camdeninspire.com/allevents
- Follow @camdeninspire on Instagram for updates
Read More on Queen at Roundhouse
