2023 Theme and Het Nieuwe Instituut as Artistic Director

London Design Biennale 2023 invites participants around the world to respond to the theme, The Global Game: Remapping Collaborations, set by Artistic Director Het Nieuwe Instituut. The theme asks countries and territories to imagine and enact new forms of international cooperation and participation, including with each other, through the medium of design. The Global Game, a web-based collaboration game developed by Play The City, is designed for the biennale’s participants and curators, as well as design enthusiasts worldwide, and will launch in autumn 2022. It allows participants to “explore potentialities for new forms of collaboration that can result in real-world collaborations,” which will manifest at the 2023 biennale. 

Playing The Global Game is like using a dating app, but one that offers a way for the biennale’s participants to find each other by creating their own profiles, searching for others based on mutual interests and developing collaborations (with the support, if requested, of Het Nieuwe Instituut). The game will enable a process for national and territorial pavilions, their curators, designers, and supporters to learn, think, create and act together on London Design Biennale’s international stage. As they meet and form new collaborations, the game will influence the way participants approach and conceptualise their pavilions and how ideas and inspiration are exchanged between design teams and visitors and through the Biennale’s public programme.