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
Studio Talks 11.00am-5.30pm // Comedy 7pm-9pm
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 Ben Elliot, Found by Few and Joel Gethin Lewis, UAL Creative Computing Institute
Panel: My AI vs. your AI vs. our AI
There's been a huge explosion of AI tools reaching mainstream use in the last year. However, the majority of these tools are designed for 1:1 use. What happens when individual benefit is in conflict with what is useful to the collective? How might we design tools that support collaborative activity rather than focusing on each individual user?
Hosted by Stripe Partners. Panelists announced soon
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 Made by Many with panelists Ivan Heredia, ex. Disney and Warner Music, Andrew Briscoe, ex. HSBC and Geraint Jones, Informa
Talk: Matt Muir
Long-time friend of Made by Many, writer of the legendary Web Curios newsletter and contributor to Private Eye. Matt has spent more than a decade documenting the increasingly surreal state of the internet and modern digital culture with a mixture of horror, fascination and very dry humour. Few people can make an audience laugh quite so hard while simultaneously making them feel slightly uneasy about the future of humanity.
Talk by Matt Muir
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 Jackson Hatfield
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
Studio Talks 12pm-5.30pm // Party from 6pm-late
Panel: Media Intimacies
A panel exploring how we form intimate connections through digital media, from one-sided "parasocial" bonds with creators to the gendered lens applied to lifestyle vlogging formats like "day in the life," "what I eat in a day," and OOTD content.
Panelists to be announced soon
Fireside chat: 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.
Panel: Gen Z, Identity, Culture and Politics
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.
Presented by OK COOL & Made by Many. Panelists to be announced soon
Talk: The Rules that Make Us
Oliver Sweet is one of the world’s leading business anthropologists. He works with brands like Coke, Ikea, Google and Dyson, to reveal the secrets behind our decision making.
In his new book The Rules That Make Us, he reveals the secrets to successful people-watching and how we can better understand consumers, voters and our relationships.
Drawing on research conducted in thirty-five countries, Sweet maps culture’s hidden rules: how they govern our behaviour, create our assumptions, even how they help us predict the future.
Talk by Oliver Sweet
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.
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 regular voice on BBC Radio 4, Jenny writes and presents the documentary series The Gift, now in its third series. Her first book, Sex Robots & Vegan Meat, was published in 2020 and her second book The Price of Life, was published in 2024.
Talk by Jenny Kleeman
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.
Talks to be announced soon
Summer Party at the Wharf
DJs, BBQ 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 DJ
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.