September news: Zetteler co-curates major retrofit summit; East Bank goes Black to the Future; Open Style Lab takes the lead on inclusive fashion

We’ve been advocating for the benefits of retrofit for yonks now, so we’re massively excited to be co-curating the first edition of National Retrofit Hub’s Retrofit, Obviously! this month – an essential one-day summit bringing together everyone interested in better ways of building, planning and housing.

From the climate crisis to fuel poverty and housing shortages, retrofit is the ready-made solution to countless problems facing the UK. Many homes are either ill-suited to ever hotter summers and colder winters, or simply lying empty (approximately 1 million in England!) and in need of repair. 

The free event at Tipping Point East in London's Royal Docks aims to expand the retrofit conversation beyond individual projects and explore the possibilities of a shared retrofit system that works for everyone and operates at scale.

The 24 September event is already sold out, but places may become available, so stay tuned.

Join the waiting list

Historically, the fashion industry has overlooked the specific needs of people with disabilities. A jacket that works with the seated position of a wheelchair? Buttons and zips that accommodate reduced grip strength? A dress with space for a medical device?

Open Style Lab is a non-profit committed to making style accessible for everyone, regardless of cognitive and physical abilities. You can find out more at Dress Coded at the RCA this Thursday, 3 September, where the 18 designers, engineers, occupational therapists and disabled collaborators in Open Style Lab’s 2026 fellowship programme will showcase their work.

For the journalists and event organisers reading this, do consider reaching out to founder Yasmin Keats – someone with extraordinary insights about fashion, inclusion and design.

Come down to the Lab

There’s a triple whammy of wooden wonder in Zetteler’s LDF highlights for 2026, with AHEC unveiling an indoor forest in Shoreditch, the launch of circular sculpture collection Useful Totem, and LOXKIN bringing social enterprise to the world of timber finishes.

Commissioned by the American Hardwood Export Council, Wood for the Trees by Mitre & Mondays and Benchmark is taking root at the Tab Centre on Hackney Road. Taking the form of an abstracted hardwood forest, the richly immersive exhibition is inspired by the feature documentary Forested Future, and makes the case for responsible forestry and sustainable timber use. 

Meanwhile, British social enterprise LOXKIN will appear at Material Matters, to showcase their signature hand-crafted hemp seed oil and beeswax wood finish. This outing will also mark a recently announced partnership with Men’s Sheds, as well as including bite-size wood-finishing workshops.

Also at Material Matters, URGE Collective and Studio Delion unveil their new creative collaboration, Useful Totem. Equal parts functional tableware and exquisite installation for the home, the collection is made from pre-loved glassware, recycled cork and waste wood offcuts – turning the unwanted into the intensely desirable.

London’s second-biggest borough in terms of population, Barnet has spent much of 2026 celebrating the contemporary creativity and hidden histories of the area with Light + Flight, an ambitious multidisciplinary cultural programme involving a host of community arts and heritage projects, performances and public events.

The whole caboodle comes to a head in November, with the Light + Flight Festival, a free multi-day celebration bringing together artists, communities, and local stories from Colindale to Finchley. At the centre of the action will be the unveiling of Ascendance, a major new public artwork by Matthew Rosier, who has been working with UP Projects to create an immersive large-scale installation rooted in in the lived experiences of Barnet’s diverse communities.

Other headline events are soon to be announced (join the Light + Flight newsletter to stay updated).

Take flight

Films such as The Sound of Metal and CODA have brought Deaf experiences closer to the cultural mainstream, and the pioneering work of Deaf Architecture Front has raised the profile of DeafSpace design in the UK’s built environment. But there is still an astonishing lack of central cultural or community hubs for the 18 million adults (one in three) who are Deaf, or have hearing loss or tinnitus.

Amanprit Arnold and Disability Urbanism are on a mission to change this with their vision for DeafCity Hub: a purpose-built cultural space dedicated to empowering and platforming the Deaf community. Launching with a year-long pilot campaign later in September, DeafCity Hub will demonstrate the value of Deaf cultural spaces for Deaf and hearing people alike.

Meet Amanprit

The fourth and final of East Bank’s free The Music is Black Festival weekends is just around the corner. Running from 12–13 September, and curated by FLOHIO and The Blues Project, Black to the Future promises to be a genre-bending closing party, bringing together artists who push the boundaries of storytelling, imagination and science fiction.

The festival series has proved one of London’s big hits of the summer – a living demonstration of East Bank’s animating belief that culture must belong to everyone. As director Tamsin Ace recently noted in her an op-ed for Arts Professional Radical financial access: The importance of free programming, the UK has a proud tradition of free cultural programming, tied in part to post-war governments who invested equally in the arts alongside health and housing. In recent decades, however, that optimistic vision for society is fading – with The Music is Black Festival, East Bank is making the case to push back and turn the tide.

Let's dance!

If you need evidence of the UK’s whole-hearted conversion to sauna culture, you don't have to look much further than Kiln Sauna in Cornwall. Less than three years since opening the doors to their first beachside sauna in Flushing, the designer-run sauna brand have just opened the steamy glass doors to their third enterprise: a state-of-the-art sauna and cold plunge experience in St Ives, with the most spectacular sea views across Porthmeor Beach. Just in time for the slide from summer into autumn, the new site features panoramic saunas, five cold plunge baths, wellness gardens, and assorted community/yoga spaces.

Saunas encourage people to slow down. There are undeniable health benefits. They bring strangers together, encourage us to explore nature and do wonders for body positivity. If you’re considering stories about design and wellness, things to do or trend pieces, grab a towel and step into Kiln Sauna.

Take the plunge!