London Design Festival  London Design Festival (LDF) is a citywide design event that takes place over nine days every September. Conceived by Sir John Sorrell and Ben Evans CBE in 2003, the concept was to create an annual event to promote the city's creativity, drawing in the country's thinkers, practitioners, retailers and educators to a deliver a diverse celebration of design. London Design Festival's vision is to celebrate and promote London as the design capital of the world. The Festival is made up of over 400 events and exhibitions staged by over 300 partner organisations across the design spectrum and from around the world. The Festival also commissions and curates its own programme of Landmark Projects, Projects at the V&A, and Special Commissions throughout the city. The 18th edition of the Festival will take place from 12-20 September 2020. Festival audiences are significant, with an estimated direct audience of over 600,000 people from over 75 countries in 2019. An additional passer-by audience of over 1 million people had the opportunity to see the Landmark and Festival Commissioned Projects. Over 2,000 international design businesses took part in the 2019 London Design Festival including exhibitors at the Design Destinations: 100% Design, Decorex International, designjunction, Focus, and London Design Fair (previously known as "Tent London"). In 2019, eleven Design Districts participated in the Festival and a Design Route - Bankside, Brompton, Chelsea, Clerkenwell, King's Cross, Marylebone, Mayfair, Paddington Central, Pimlico Road, Shoreditch, Victoria and West Kensington - offering a programme of events, exhibitions, talks, workshop and tours. The V&A Museum is the official residency and hub of the Festival, with 2020 seeing the celebration of 12 years in partnership together. Since 2009 the Victoria and Albert Museum has acted as the central hub location for the London Design Festival. In 2019, London Design Festival helped drive a total of 120,000 visits to the V&A over the Festival period with 22% of those surveyed saying they had never visited the Museum before and were driven there by the Festival. For the nine days of the Festival, visitors to the V&A each year explore a range of special displays and installations throughout the museum, complemented by an extensive programme of events, talks, keynotes, daily tours, and workshops. In 2019 Global Design Forum drew 50 speakers from 18 countries, and 2,800 visitors. Celebrating twelve years with the V&A as the official London Design Festival hub in 2020, this unique collaboration sees iconic spaces within the Museum transformed each year by an extraordinary collection of specially-commissioned installations and displays by international contemporary designers.