Designers Dulcie Davy, Es Devlin and Yinka Ilori share their routes into their careers with chair Jeremy Ngatho Cole, dishing out advice to emerging creatives.
The panel discusses overcoming barriers in the industry, staying true to yourself and your craft, and building community and collaboration.
Dulcie Davy, a visual artist from south London, primarily works within the mediums of painting and sculpture. She specialises in sculpted functional art, drawing inspiration from the beauty and diversity within the female Black community, viewed through an afro-futuristic lens. Her work is influenced by both her mixed-race heritage and the vibrant city she grew up in.
Through three decades of major installation and performance works, artist and designer Es Devlin has become known as ‘the poet of light and sound’. Her large scale participatory choral sculptures Library of Light (2025), Congregation (2024), Come Home Again (2022) and Forest of Us (2021) explore porosity between self and other. Her celebrated luminous kinetic stage sculptures invite theatre, opera and stadium audiences to convene within resonant archetypal forms and gestures transfused with contemporary technology.
Drawing on Nigerian parables and verbal traditions, Yinka Ilori’s humorous, provocative and playful work is underpinned by the belief that art and design should be accessible to all. Often using the city as his canvas, he reimagines spaces to encourage a sense of community and invites audiences to engage and participate in his work and its surroundings.
Jeremy Ngatho Cole is an award-winning film-maker, artist and the creative director for Little Simz. His work spans film, music, and live performance and design, from co-directing Channel 4’s Four to the Floor to shaping the show design for major live sets like Simz’ No Thank You tour and Glastonbury headline set. As co-founder of the creative studio YOUT, with Marcus Grey, he has led visual projects for artists including Michael Kiwanuka, Ezra Collective, Celeste and Pa Salieu.
