Skip to main content
4 to 15 November 2026 at Central Saint Martins

Crossroads: Being Human Festival 2026

Panelists in discussion seated around a table under a sign in caps stating 'Common Ground'. An audience watches on
Common Ground during Re:generating Creativity, Berenice Guzzo 2025

Opening times

Wednesday-Friday: 11am–6pm

Free, just drop in.

The gallery is closed Mondays and Tuesdays.

Find us

How to get to the Lethaby Gallery

This November, Central Saint Martins transforms the Lethaby Gallery into Crossroads - a public creative laboratory, classroom and forum for ideas.

From 4-15 November 2026, CSM researchers, postgraduate students, staff, and collaborators will come together for a 2-week programme of exhibitions, workshops, conversations, performances and experiments. As part of the national Being Human Festival, Crossroads brings research and creative practice into the gallery, inviting audiences to encounter new ideas, take part in conversations and explore research through making, doing and exchange.

The UK’s national festival of the humanities, Being Human Festival is led by the School of Advanced Study, University of London, in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the British Academy.

Three interconnected spaces

Crossroads unfolds across three interconnected spaces within the Lethaby Gallery:

The workshop

A space for participation, experimentation and making. Visitors can get involved in practical sessions and explore ideas through doing.

The amphitheatre

A space presenting talks, discussions, performances, forum theatre, screenings, readings and other forms of collective exchange.

The exhibition

A space for installations, artworks, research outputs and other materials.

Bringing these spaces together allows ideas and practices from across disciplines to encounter one another, creating room for dialogue, response and unexpected connections.

What to expect

The programme moves between questions of identity, justice, sustainability, technology and our relationships with the more-than-human world.

  • Take part in 'Codesigning with Prisoners as Creative Justice': exploring facilitation techniques and the realities of working creatively in a prison environment. And see clothing co-designed with prisoners at HMP Isis.
  • Reconsider our relationships with other species through interspecies encounters and relational practices in 'Being [More Than] Human'.
  • Explore queer histories and visual culture through 'Queer Clicks: Visual Representations of Queerness in the Archive' with Alistair O’Neil.
  • Join 'Moving Knowledge: Dance at the Intersections', as academic practitioners from UAL and The Place come together to explore dance as a site of encounter, creation and discovery.

Events programme

All events take place in the Lethaby Gallery. View the full collection on Eventbrite.

Queer Clicks

Wednesday 4 November | 4-6pm | Info and tickets.

Explore how queerness is visualised in archives and collections. An afternoon of presentations, conversations and performances from the Central Saint Martins community and external guests.

Creative Policymaking, Creative Bureaucracies?

Thursday 5 November | 1.30-3pm | Info and tickets

Chaired by Professor Lucy Kimbell, this talk brings together researchers and practitioners to share perspectives on creative policymaking.

Listening Currents: Singing, Fishing, to Net Across the Greater Caribbean

Wednesday 11 November | 6-8pm | Info and tickets

Gathering together, we journey across the Greater Caribbean and the Americas through sonic traditions, storytelling, and netting. Listening currents invites audiences into coastal imaginings, moving between folk songs, fishing and netting techniques, and video archives.

Creative Justice? Co-designing with Prisoners

Wednesday 11 November | 1-2.30pm | Info and tickets

This talk explores what happens when artists and designers work with, rather than simply for, people in prison. Professor Lorraine Gamman, joined by Sarah Gresty (Course Leader, BA Fashion), Alex Schady (Programme Director, Fine Art) and a selection of guests will discuss co-design and creative practice at HMP Pentonville and HMP Isis.

Co-designing with Prisoners (workshop)

Friday 13 November | 1.30-3pm | Info and tickets

What is it like to make and co-design inside a prison? This participatory workshop explores creativity within constraint through hands-on making. Come prepared to make something, meet others, exchange ideas and think differently about what creativity can make possible inside a prison.

Featured work

  • Participants are seated around a table working with pens, postits and paper. A tutor is leaning over and demonstrating to one of the participants.
    CSM Workshop at HMP Isis
  • A small square portrait of a face wearing makeup and a pale pillbox hat with netting over the face, posing to camera. The image is on a white background. It has title text in black caps above and below the image: Queer Clicks: Visual Representations of Queerness in the Archive
    Queer Clicks
  • People are seated in a room at an event. The presenters are standing at the top of the space under a sign in caps spelling Untold in white letters
    Untold x Central Saint Martins BA Fashion
  • Close-up on a trio of speakers in a panel. The person in the middle is holding a mic and speaking while the others listen.
    A Common Thread exhibition, Central Saint Martins, UAL.
  • A photographer takes a shot of a person with their back to camera who is dressed in streetwear and appears to be performing while people look on.
    HMP Isis 2026 Menswear Project led by BA Fashion, Central Saint Martins, UAL.

Central Saint Martins

Contact

Telephone

+44 (0)20 7514 7444

Address

1 Granary Square
King's Cross
London
N1C 4AA