The third edition of the GREEN GRADS will feature over fifty graduates taking over the third floor of the Heal’s Building on Tottenham Court Road, London, showcasing design ideas to heal the planet.
 
At this year’s show, you will find seats made of seaweed, fabrics printed with bacteria, and a spread of new bio-materials as a way forward from plastic. There is also a big emphasis on upcycling, with graduates innovating from waste, such as furniture and utensils from discarded denim and chandeliers pieced together from London’s junked bottles. 
 
Look out for the designs of Max Everest (Instagram @max3v3r3st), who sources components from skips to create his distinctive furniture and lighting pieces. Ben Watson (Instagram @soiledworks) revamps discarded vapes into lighting, adding minimal new material. Alice Coomber (Instagram @alicecoomberart ) highlights the ubiquity and potential harm of microplastics. Her textiles, designed as blinds and screens, are made from waste plastics with a static charge that traps microplastics. The vibrant orange of the installation is from Sainsbury’s carrier bags. Alice said that her biggest challenge as a novice weaver was threading up the loom – “over 2,000 individual threads because of the scale of the project.” 
 
GREEN GRADS takes place the first weekend of the 2023 London Design Festival this September. There will also be a display of past alumni who now have projects making a difference in the world, such as Kiara Taylor, who won a major Innovation Award from Samsung, adapting her wind turbine made from waste electronics for a drip feed irrigation system for farmers in Ghana.
 
GREEN GRADS, now in its third year, is a “platform” for new graduate eco-activists whose work tackles various environmental issues. It was founded and curated by the award-winning design journalist Barbara Chandler, alongside Co-Director Michael Czerwinski, a trained ceramicist. The initiative nurtures a new generation of sustainability-minded designers and creatives, empowering them to put their ideas into practice, connecting them with manufacturers, design practices and galleries and promoting their work to a broader audience.
 
The GREEN GRADS Hub at Heal’s
Free entry
Venue: Third floor of the Manufactory Building, 196 Tottenham Court Road, W1T 7LQ. Enter the exhibition through Heal’s store.
Opening hours:
Saturday 16 September 10.30 am - 6 pm
Sunday 17 September 12 noon - 6 pm
Monday 18 September 10.30 am - 6 pm