open call: london craft week 2026 | whisperer
We are excited to announce an open call for artists, architects, designers, performers, and interdisciplinary makers to participate in WHISPERer, our upcoming exhibition at London Craft Week
Time: 15–17 May 2026
Address: 5 Church Street, Marylebone, United Kingdom, NW8 8EE
Submission Form: https://forms.gle/VfVCpYWBJkucZFiv9
Open Call Timeline
Final Submission Deadline: 21 April 2026, 23:59 (BST)
Please note: Artist will receive a response within 15 working days of submitting your application. All submissions will be carefully reviewed by our curatorial team, and only selected works will be included in the exhibition. We encourage early submissions, as space is limited and proposals are reviewed on a rolling basis.
About London Craft Week:
London Craft Week is an international festival celebrating exceptional craftsmanship across disciplines. The programme brings together artists, designers, and master artisans through exhibitions, installations, talks, and curated experiences that foreground process, experimentation, and cultural exchange.
We invite submissions from artists, creative practitioners, craftspeople, and designers working across all media. Whether your practice is rooted in handcraft, material research, conceptual exploration, or interdisciplinary design, we are seeking work that demonstrates integrity of process, clarity of vision, and a compelling relationship to making.
London Craft Week offers a dynamic international audience, critical visibility, and the opportunity to situate your work within a global conversation about craft’s evolving role in contemporary culture.
ABOUT WHISPERer:
WHISPERer is a curated exhibition presented by SPIRA9 and Indra Gallery as part of London Craft Week 2026, exploring the quiet intelligence that resides within acts of making.
Craft is often a quiet language. It speaks through touch, repetition, and the subtle dialogue between maker and material. WHISPERer explores these understated conversations, revealing the rhythms, patterns, and gestures that shape meaning through the act of making.
Presented as part of London Craft Week 2026, the exhibition brings together artists working across diverse and interdisciplinary craft practices. From textiles, ceramics, metalwork, and jewellery to installation, digital systems, generative processes, and immersive media, the participating artists expand the definition of craft beyond traditional boundaries. Here, craft is understood not only as skilled handwork, but as a thoughtful engagement between material, process, technology, and idea.
Across the exhibition, materials become carriers of memory, labour, and time. Repetition becomes rhythm; rhythm becomes structure. Through weaving, forming, coding, assembling, and transforming materials, the artists reveal how meaning can emerge gradually through attentive making.
Some works explore the relationship between intuition and system. Others uncover hidden patterns embedded in natural growth, cultural traditions, or technological processes. Together, they demonstrate how craft continues to evolve as a living, interdisciplinary practice shaped by both tradition and experimentation.
Inspired by the quiet logic found in natural systems, cycles of growth, repeating structures, and evolving forms, the exhibition considers making as a living process. Each gesture grows from the previous one; repetition becomes rhythm, and rhythm becomes structure.
The works in WHISPERer do not simply present finished objects. Instead, they invite viewers to slow down and notice the invisible architectures behind them: the patience of process, the intelligence of materials, and the devotion embedded in acts of making.
Presented during London Craft Week 2026, WHISPERer offers a space for reflection within the rhythm of the city, a place where visitors can listen closely to the subtle language of craft and rediscover the poetry that exists within the act of creation.
WHISPERer Prize:
We also want to take this special moment to share that the WHISPERer Prize, organised by SPIRA9, Indra Gallery and London Craft Week 2026, will be presented to recognise outstanding artistic and material-based practices within the exhibition. The WHISPERer Prize celebrates works that demonstrate exceptional sensitivity to material, conceptual depth, and innovation in contemporary craft and interdisciplinary making.
Know more about the WHISPERer Prize here
Award recipients will be announced ahead of the exhibition opening.
WHAT WE ARE LOOKING FOR:
We welcome submissions across disciplines, including but not limited to:
Textiles, weaving, and fibre
Ceramics and sculptural forms
Metalwork and jewellery
Paper, wood, and stone
Installation and spatial practices
Digital craft, generative, and algorithmic systems
Hybrid and cross-disciplinary approaches
Sound, light, and immersive new media art
Works that explore memory, emotion, or narrative embedded in materials
Experimental materials, prototyping, and research-driven practices
We encourage interdisciplinary, experimental, and boundary-pushing proposals that reinterpret craft, art, and making in innovative ways. Craft is understood expansively, as disciplined engagement between hand, tool, system, and idea
Participation Fee:
To ensure the highest level of curation and support for the selected projects, a participation fee (including VAT) is required for each artist.
Besides the benefits listed, the fee also includes:
Fine art printing and presentation preparation (if needed)
Framing, mounting, and structural display solutions
Custom plinths and exhibition furniture (if needed)
Professional spatial planning and installation by the curatorial team
Technical infrastructure for digital and moving-image works (screens, projectors, lighting systems, cabling, mounting hardware)
On-site technical supervision during installation
Professionally produced wall texts and artwork labels
Inclusion in the official exhibition archive and documentation
For further inquiries or additional details, please contact us at: info@spira9.art