Meet the RCA at New Designers 2025

New Designers is an annual London showcase of the UK’s most innovative emerging design talent. Students and graduates from both the School of Communication and School of Design are exhibiting with an exciting range of work and programme of discussions scheduled.

The School of Communication is hosting a series of roundtable discussions, live and evolving works, interactive and immersive experiences for guest to participate in.

Every day

Whale Fall VR by Digital Direction MA: VR installation open for visitors to try

Whale Fall is an immersive VR experience that explores the phenomena of 'Whale Fall' to explore the impact of plastic pollution on marine ecologies, especially Whales, and is an urgent call for action against the rising climate crisis.

Showreel by Communication MFA: 24-minute runtime.

Showreel by Animation MA: 24-minute runtime.

Wednesday 9 July

Roundtables open for visitors to join or observe.

12noon-2:00pm - Open Studio x Digital Direction MA
2:30-4:30pm – SPILL x Visual Communication MA

5:00-7:00pm – Translation x Information Experience Design MA

Thursday 10 July

Roundtables by Digital Direction MA open for visitors to join or observe.

10:00-11:30am The Space Between: Navigating the space between inner worlds and outer worlds, the past and the future, to address urgent concerns in contemporary culture.

11:30am-1:00pm Immersive Storytelling Methods: Crafting stories that move beyond just the screen and into space, stimulating a multi-sensory, interactive and narrative experience.

2:00pm-3:30pm Working in Tandem: Focusing on how we work with others as part of our creative practice.

3:30- 5:00pm Future of Digital Storytelling: Thinking about emerging digital technologies, and what they mean for storytelling.

Friday 11 July

Discussions and activities by Information Experience Design MA open for visitors to join or observe.

10:00-11:30am Culture as Raw Material: Explores how culture is more than context and how it’s the raw material of design. Through tactile memory exercises, discussion, and co-creation, visitors reflect on how heritage, community, and lived experience shape creative practice. Includes a material memory table that builds a collective cultural palette?

11:30am-1:00pm Glyph Yourself!: This workshop invites audiences to reimagine glyphs as visual representations of language. Through their body movement, the audience engages in a posthumanist exploration of language, shifting away from a human perspective.

1:00-2:30pm Crossroads: hybrid identities: A zine and collage-based session exploring cultural hybridity, translation, and layered identities within storytelling. Visitors reflect on dual heritage, bilingualism, and the messiness of living between norms producing personal and collective zines about hybrid identities.

2:00-4:00pm I Am a City: A cartographic workshop making 3 maps. One of our journey that day, one of the journey of our lives, and thirdly a journey of our ancestral path that brought us to where we now live. We will need fancy pens and paper

4:00-5:30pm Machine Mirror: Reimagining Ourselves Through AI Avatars: In this hands-on zine workshop, participants will create AI-generated avatars that reflect, distort, or reinvent their self-image. Through guided prompts, collage-making, and group reflection, we’ll explore how artificial intelligence interprets identity—and what that says about us, our culture, and the biases embedded in technology.

5:30-5:45pm Bored Bored Bored - final hour of reflection: A reading group and reflective hour to share ideas encountered throughout the days at the expo and discuss inspiration, thoughts, and feelings on how it went.

Saturday 12 July

10:00am-5:00pm Notes on the Fridge— democratising the design process: Resonating with RCA Visual Communication’s celebration of conversational practice, we invite visitors to our ‘dining table’—our roundtable for communal exchange. We Invite participants to take part in making a communal zine about food and migration. Participants will be sharing food from their memories, responding to the prompt from the previous participants—demonstrating connections using visual design methods.

The School of Design exhibition includes themes of innovation and entrepreneurship. Work on display is from current students as well as graduates who have started their own business themselves or with their classmates, often commercialising a product or service developed during their studies. Our award-winning business incubator programme, InnovationRCA, is one of the UK’s most successful in supporting graduate start-ups.

Work on exhibition at New Designers is from students from:

• Design Futures MDes
• Design Products MA
• Fashion MA
• Innovation Design Engineering MA/MSc
• Service Design MA
• Textiles MA

Portfolio Reviews

Academics from the School of Design are available on the stand for free portfolio reviews from 2:00-4:00pm, Thursday-Saturday.

New Designers is open:

• Wednesday 9th July, 12:00pm - 5:00pm
• Thursday 10th July, 10:00am - 5:00pm
• Friday 11th July, 10:00am - 5:00pm
• Saturday 12th July, 10:00am - 5:00pm

Please note this is an externally managed event and tickets are required.

Industry

Industry guests may be eligible for complimentary tickets. The preview evening is on Wednesday 9th July from 5:00-8:00pm, with the awards ceremony from 7:00pm.

Industry guests can book using the RCA's unique link. All tickets are validated before being accepted. Trade Ticket holders will have unlimited access to New Designers across all days.

General Admissions 2-for-1

The RCA has been given an allocation of 60x 2-for-1 tickets, valid on all ticket types, including concession.

The RCA's unique code is ND241UNI11 which can be used when purchasing tickets online.