South by South West festival to integrate visual art at 2025 London debut

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South by South West (SXSW) London, the first iteration of the celebrated South by South West festival to take place in the UK capital, will run from 2 to 7 June 2025 in east London’s Shoreditch. Originally held in Austin, Texas, this new location will integrate visual arts into the festival’s six-day programme of music, film, culture and technology.

“When I think about London, I’ve always been attracted to this idea that the music scene is completely melded together with fashion and the visual arts,” says Patrick Moore, a board member of SXSW London and former executive director of the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh.

“This whole ethos and design of our location [in Shoreditch] is based on having this interaction and collaboration,” Randel Bryan, managing director of SXSW London, said last week. “We call them beautiful collisions. People come together from different disciplines and they’re all really enthusiastic about how they can create something new.”

Grassroots support for visual arts

The curator Beth Greenacre has been appointed visual arts adviser to the festival. A long-time collaborator with the enormously influential musician and collector David Bowie, Greenacre was curator of Bowie’s collection until his death in 2016 and was also director of Bowieart, an online platform supporting young emerging artists.

Greenacre will work with a team that includes Adem Holness, previously head of contemporary music at Southbank Centre, as head of music and Anna Bogutskaya, formerly with the BFI and Edinburgh International Film Festival, as head of screen. Katy Arnander, who has previously worked with Barbican and Sadler’s Wells, is director of programming, while Alex Poots will act as a creative adviser to the festival while continuing to work full-time at The Shed in New York.

One of the things that most excites Greenacre about this role is “the community-driven grassroots aspect of South by Southwest. And tapping into the recent history of London and the visual arts”, she tells The Art Newspaper. She is excited to do so in Shoreditch, which was such a “fertile stomping ground” for the Young British Artists (YBAs), in the early 2000s—a point when “the London art world took hold of the reins and we are where we are today because of it”.

“I’ve always been interested in supporting new talent,” Greenacre says, “so supporting those that may not have had the opportunities previously will be great.” She has been interested throughout her working life, she says, in the convergence of art forms.

“I worked with David Bowie from very early in my career [in the 1990s] and who better to teach us that one doesn’t make distinctions between art forms and that there aren’t hierarchies between different art forms. That’s something that i was privy to, supported and championed with David … This idea of cross-pollination, the ecosystem of the art forms all coming together to support one another, I think is very interesting and valuable and vital.”

Greenacre is particularly looking forward to working with London’s broad array of arts institutions. The festival comes at a really important time, she says “when our institutions and venues need that support. I think it is vital right now that there is energy and input and content and support for creating new content for those venues that are all struggling a little.”

The SXSW brand

SXSW London—in common with an Australian version of the festival which launched in Sydney in 2023 and returns in October—is presented by an entity which has licensed the name and rights from the Austin-based flagship business, which retains control over the SXSW brand.

“A shorter date format relative to SXSW in Austin [which typically runs for nine days], will allow SXSW London to run its conference, music, screen and arts programmes at the same time, ensuring accessibility to multiple programming formats and diverse networking opportunities for attendees from different industries,” Randel Bryan said,

“Bringing SXSW to the streets of Shoreditch will allow us to create a festival like no other, one that unfolds across incredible indoor spaces whilst also showcasing creativity and artistic experiences in unique public spaces, allowing us to capture the energy and excitement of the summer.”