World Stage Design (www.wsd2013.com) comes to the UK for the first time from 5th – 15th September at Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama in Cardiff.

It has been an amazing experience to be involved in shaping this festival from the beginning over a year ago. As UK Performance Design Commissioner for OISTAT and co-curator of the Design as Performance strand with Aby Cohen and Sophie Jump it has been a real privilege to select and programme performances from around the world from our open submission call. Alongside that, I felt it was very important that we created a programme of activity that might engage new artists and audiences with the event. These projects take a look at everything from the role of design and the designer in large scale community projects (The Intimate and The Epic) to celebrating and supporting the work of emerging practitioners/companies (FOUR), creating a tangible forum for the thoughts, ideas and aspirations of those just starting out (The Market Place) to sharing what we do with a wider public in Cardiff itself in new and innovative ways  (Wayfinding@ World Stage Design). By doing this I hope we are building a sustainable future for organisations such as OISTAT and events like this whether they are taking place in the UK or somewhere else in the world.