Podcast — Designing Shambala Festival
By: Design Thinkers Academy London
Tags: Shambala, Music, Music Festivals, Design Thinking, Festivals

Photo credit: Jenna Foxton

Shambala is a four-day festival that takes place in Northamptonshire, England with over 200 musical, comedy, and dance acts across dozens of venues and stages. It is a multiple award winner, including the Innovation Award at the 2018 UK Festival Awards, in recognition of its pioneering sustainability practices.

We first met Shambala’s Creative Director and co-founder Sid Sharma back in 2019 when he attended our Design Thinkers Bootcamp. He loved that experience so much, he’s since been back on our Online Facilitation, Advanced Facilitation and Prototyping courses. In this edition of our podcast we spoke to Sid about the origins of Shambala festival, their drive for sustainability, why he wants a Design Thinking tent at the festival and why he’s also signed up for our upcoming Design Sprint Camp.

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Photo credit: Andrew Whitton

Photo credit: Andrew Whitton

Design Sprint Camp

If you’re interested in joining Sid and getting involved in our Climate Challenge, then do get in touch about our upcoming Design Sprint Camp. It is a unique opportunity to join world-class experts in design, innovation and sustainability on a real-world challenge as together we share techniques, develop skills and co-create responsible revolutions. Learn to apply Design Thinking for sustainability, develop new solutions to a brief set with The Carbon Trust and meet like minded innovators from around the world. The last day to sign up is 12/11/2021 so don’t miss out.

We are delighted to announce our exciting lineup of speakers for the Sprint:

Gillian Tett

Gillian Tett is a British author and journalist at the Financial Times, where she is chair of the editorial board and editor-at-large, US. She writes weekly columns, covering a range of economic, financial, political and social issues. In 2014, she was named Columnist of the Year in the British Press Awards and was the first recipient of the Royal Anthropological Institute Marsh Award. In June 2009 her book Fool’s Gold won Financial Book of the Year at the inaugural Spear’s Book Awards.

John Thackara

John Thackara is a writer and curator working in the realms of social, ecological and relational design. He curated the celebrated Doors of Perception conference for 20 years, first in Amsterdam, later across India; he was commissioner of the social innovation biennial Dott 07 in the UK, and the French design biennial, City Eco Lab. In 2019 he curated the Urban-Rural expo in Shanghai. Now, as visiting professor at Tongji University in China, he is developing an event called LIfeworlds about ecological restoration and multi-species design.

Gemma Curtin

Gemma Curtin is the co-curator of Waste Age — What can design do? running at the Design Museum from 23 October 2021. The exhibition exposes our ‘take, make and waste’ economy, which has created an environmental crisis. It explores what design can do to rethink the way we produce and consume goods, how waste can be transformed into a valuable resource and how new materials and systems can reduce waste and the impact on our planet. Gemma is a Curator at the Design Museum where she is responsible for many exhibitions covering contemporary architecture, product design and fashion.

John Bielenberg

John Bielenberg is a designer, entrepreneur, and imaginative advocate for a better world. He is the founder of Project M, and co-founder of Future, Common, Thinknado and 3rdActivist. John has won more than 250 design awards in his career, including the 2013 AIGA Gold Medal for leadership in the design for good movement. In 2003, John Bielenberg created Project M, an immersive program designed to inspire and educate young designers, writers, photographers, and filmmakers by proving that their work-especially their “wrongest” thinking-can have significant impact on communities. In 2016, John co-wrote a book called Think Wrong that inspires people to conquer the status quo and do work that matters and in 2021 will launch Thinknado, a “tornado thinking” toolkit.

Tim Ogilvie

Tim Ogilvie is the Founder of Peer Insight, the US-based innovation consultancy, and is a Partner in PX Venture Studio, its venture-building arm. His practice merges creative design thinking with savvy business strategy to help clients explore new services and business models. Tim has launched innovative products, services, and businesses for companies such as Nike, Johnson & Johnson, AARP, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, and Procter & Gamble. He is also a Visiting Lecturer at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business, where he teaches design thinking.

Becky Rowe is a research specialist and the owner and Head of Research at the award-winning strategic research agency, Revealing Reality.

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