Summer at The Wharf
Welcome to Summer at the Wharf
For the second year running, Made by Many & Friends, are hosting a two-day festival that just so happens to coincide with SXSW landing in London.
Summer at The Wharf is a two-day event that is part-talks, part-party, set in the heart of London’s creative quarter at Diespeker Wharf.
Across Thursday 4th and Friday 5th June, we’re opening the doors to our studio and canal-side courtyard for a relaxed gathering of designers, technologists, cultural explorers, future obsessives, and friends.
A Programme for the Future-Curious
Upstairs, the studio becomes an intimate venue for talks and panels curated for a future-curious crowd. We've brought together thinkers and makers pushing boundaries across disciplines, from AI consciousness and branding to Gen Z culture, digital media intimacies, and the future of innovation.
Across both days, expect thoughtful provocations, cultural insights and space to actually talk about what matters.
Thursday 4 June line-up
Studio Talks 11.00am-5.30pm // Comedy 7pm-9pm
11:10-11:20 - Welcome to Summer at the Wharf
Intro by Made by Many Founder & CEO, Tim Malbon
11:25-12:00 - Panel: When Everyone Designs, What do Designers do?
Design teams are shrinking. Juniors can't get hired. Anyone with Claude and Figma can ship a product. We ask the people living this change what is left for designers to do? We’ll try to avoid talking about the usual tools and processes. The panel will be provocative and grounded personal experience; focused on the economics of what we do, and the value we create as designers.
Hosted by Tom Harding with a brilliant panel of Jade Pughe, Mother, Ben Elliot, Found by Few and Joel Gethin Lewis, UAL Creative Computing Institute and Adam Morris, The Economist
12:05-12:40 - Panel: My AI vs Our AI
My AI is brilliant. Your AI is brilliant. Our AI barely exists.
ChatGPT, Claude, Cursor, the defining tools of the last year are designed primarily around a single user. But our lives aren’t in a 1:1 relationship with our technologies. We share homes, projects, conversations, decisions, futures with others.
What gets lost when AI optimises for the individual? Where does personal benefit pull against the collective? And what does it take to build multiplayer AI tools that work for families, friends, colleagues and communities?
Our panellists will share what they’ve learnt researching, designing and building collaborative AI at the frontier of what’s possible today.
Hosted by Erin Hackett, Stripe Partners with panelists Sarah Gold, IF, Matt Webb, Inanimate and Maggie Appleton, Github
13:50-14:25 - Talk: Bring the Noise: Resilience in the Age of Information Disorder
Misinformation is as old as humanity. What has changed is the scale, speed and cost of generating and spreading it - while trust in the institutions that once verified knowledge has structurally collapsed.
The real danger, however, is not disinformation itself but the cultural pessimism it produces. A society that believes everything is false has already lost.
The goal cannot be to eliminate misinformation - no society ever has. It is to build resilience: to redesign our information architecture and culture so that trust can function, and life can go on, in the permanent presence of white noise.
Talk by Stephan Sigrist, Dr. sc. ETH Zürich, Founder and Head of W.I.R.E.
14:30-15:05 - Panel: The Changemaker Series - The Future of Innovation
Three leaders from financial services, brand strategy, and marketing innovation will join a panel to explore how large organisations can legitimise, fund, and ship innovation initiatives in a world where things are moving quicker than ever before.
Hosted by Chief Innovation & Strategy Officer Mordecai with panelists Ivan Heredia, ex. Disney and Warner Music, Andrew Briscoe, ex. HSBC and Geraint Jones, Informa
15:40-16:15 - Talk: Everything Online Is Weird Now
A broad and mildly traumatised exploration of the current state of internet culture, where AI slop, algorithmic incentives, synthetic media, engagement farming and platform absurdity have combined to create a digital environment that feels simultaneously hilarious, disorientating and psychologically destabilising. A talk about what it actually feels like to live inside the modern internet.
Talk by Matt Muir, lobbyist, arts and culture PR, videogames PR, government PR, digital PR, social media 'expert', 'strategist', creative and writer of the legendary Web Curios newsletter
16:20-16:55 - Interactive Talk: Make It - AI Design and Experimentation
Made by Many’s long-held belief that the best way to solve problems is to stop talking about it and start making it has never felt more relevant in a world of AI.
In this interactive session, Made by Many practitioners will share how we’re using AI tools in our own practice. Expect live experimentation, reflections on what works (and what absolutely doesn’t), and a look at how AI is changing the relationship between thinking and making.
Talk by Made by Many's Tim Malbon, Joe Hornby and Iain Tait, FOOD
17:00-19:00 - CPO Connect Networking Drinks
Product leadership can be lonely. Many senior communities are gated, expensive or filled with noise. CPO Connect is the alternative: a free, trusted, and high-quality community, where product leaders can learn from each other, support each other and grow together.
Join the community for networking drinks in the courtyard of Summer at the Wharf. Meet with other product leaders in a down to earth, casual setting, complete with live jazz and canal views.
19:00-21:00 - Comedy: Stand Up at the Wharf
An evening of stand up comedy from 7pm - 9pm
Three of the UK’s most exciting up and coming comedy acts join forces for a first ever stand up evening at the Wharf.
MC by Kate Barron, stand up sets by Kudzanayi Chiwawa, Diesel, and Kae Kurd
Friday 5 June line-up
Studio Talks 12pm-5.30pm // Party from 6pm-late
12:30-12:40 - Welcome to Summer at the Wharf
Day two intro by Made by Many Founder & CEO, Tim Malbon
12:40-13:15 - Talk: From Products to Worlds: What cults, fandoms and video games can teach us about modern brand building
Chasing trends on the modern internet isn’t enough. This talk looks at how video games, fandoms, sports, and cults paved the way for the deep, ubiquitous ‘world-building’ required for brands to create deep identity and bizarrely loyal devotion. Grounded in chaotic internet culture and actual strategy, Lucinda talk will detail what her six-part framework: Rules, Roles, Objects, Symbols, Rituals, and Lore, tells us about modern brand building.
Talk by Lucinda Bounsall, Founder and Head of Strategy, Sibling Studio
13:20-13:55 - Fireside chat: Is it art or memes? Times New Roadman in Conversation with Eliza Power
Across from our own Eliza Power, Times New Roadman–real name Niall Gallagher–will talk art, memes, and life making fun of creatives from East London. (Who’s gonna tell him?).
Usually based in Bournemouth, we’ve convinced him to come up to the big smoke and share what memes reveal about an infamously performative zeitgeist, how art can act as cultural commentary, and how the digital channels his pieces usually find their home mediates what he creates.
14:00-14:35 - Panel: What even is online anymore?
Back by popular demand: OK COOL & Made by Many return to torch the latest lazy takes about Gen Z. Our resident Gen Zs grill a panel of strategists, creatives and makers, plus a surprise guest from the depths of the internet.
This time–how is digital mediating Gen Z lives? Not just surface level “how do young people behave online?”, but what new realities of space, time and connection are formed when digital and physical become one and the same?
Presented by OK COOL & Made by Many. Panelists to be announced soon
15:05-15:40 - Talk: The Rules that Make Us
A bridge between psychology and anthropology, “The Rules That Makes Us” is a witty, human exploration of how the hidden rules of culture quietly shape our lives, and what happens when we start to read between the lines.
Drawing on research across 35 countries, Sweet uncovers how culture governs behaviour, drives belonging and defines belief. Blending stories, science and strategy, he offers a new way to understand consumers, colleagues and ourselves — and shows why culture, not cognition, is the true force behind human behaviour.
Talk by Oliver Sweet, writer and head of ethnography, IPSOS
15:45-16:20 - Panel: On AI and the Question of Consciousness
What happens when people start treating machines as though they think - and what does that mean for agency, identity, and moral recognition?
This panel will explore the stranger implications of AI for the philosophy of mind, and how these questions are already reshaping design, discourse, and the popular imagination.
Hosted by Made by Many with panelists Professor Mark Bishop, Professor of Cognitive Computing, Goldsmiths, University of London and Scientific Adviser to FACT360 and Anders Sandberg, Researcher at the Mimir Center for Long Term Futures Research at the Institute for Futures Studies.
16:50-17:10 - Talk: How Sci-Fi Inspires Tech Innovation
Jenny Kleeman is a journalist, broadcaster and author. She won the 2025 Orwell Prize for journalism. She writes long form magazine pieces for the Guardian, the Financial Times Magazine and the Sunday Times Magazine.
A storyteller by heart, Jenny’s talk will explore how without the imaginations of the sci-fi writers of yesteryear, what we’ve come to see as organic tech innovation might have never existed. From self-driving cars to augmented reality, tech and storytelling go hand in hand to create the realities we live in and aspire to.
Talk by Jenny Kleeman
17:15-17:50 - Talk: Rogue (Mini) Talks
Three short, curated (and oddly existential) expert talks reflecting on how design, technology and AI meaningfully intersect with the future of humanity. This time we dig into what 'designer babies' tell us about the evolution of human enhancement, how AI girlfriends are reinforcing power imbalances, and what 'good' taste actually reveals about our prejudices.
18:00-23:00 - Summer Party at the Wharf
Live music, DJs, magicians, face painting, food, and bar in the courtyard and studio from 6pm til late...
Downstairs: Enjoy Our Courtyard
We’re turning the Diespeker Wharf courtyard into a two-day hangout:
All-day BBQ and snacks for purchase
Courtyard bar with cocktails, beers and more
Acoustic sets and DJs
Tickets
There are two ways to experience Summer at The Wharf:
Studio Talks + Courtyard Access
Includes access to the full upstairs talks programme
Plus courtyard bar, food, and live entertainment
Thursday Pass: £10 (including comedy)
Friday Pass: £15
Stand Up at The Wharf
Comedy only ticket for Thursday 4th June 6-9pm: £5
Who it’s for
People who work in design, technology, and creative industries. People building things, thinking about the future, or interested in where it’s all heading.
The programme’s broad on purpose, from branding to AI to sci-fi, and the setting’s relaxed. Bring friends, bring your team. Or just bring yourself.