designer/artist

Writer, editor, curator, and radio show presenter

Adrian Westaway Co-founder & Director of Technology and Magic at Special Projects Adrian is an inventor, engineer and experience designer on a mission to make the human-technology interaction meaningful and delightful. As co-founder of Special Projects he harnesses technology, inclusive research and magic thinking to devise design propositions that feel familiar yet wondrous. A self-taught magician since the age of 11 and full member of the Magic Circle, he relentlessly pursues his conviction that “designers should use magic thinking and try to introduce surprise, delight and fuzzy feeling in the things they create.” After becoming the first ever James Dyson Fellow in 2007, and a Fellow of the Royal Commission of 1851, in 2010, for his work on interactive lighting systems, Adrian built a playground in Peru, had whisky with Derren Brown as a student in Bristol, and tried to make his teachers disappear. His contagious passion for magic and engineering made him a beloved tutor and lecturer in Design & Innovation at Queen Mary University and the Royal College of Art, in London and a visiting faculty member at the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design. There he teaches ‘Magic and Design’, a nomadic workshop where students are introduced to methods of using design and technology to create enchanted products and experiences.

Born in Kolkata, India I moved to the UK as a teenager and to London when I got into Central Saint Martins to study illustration. I'm still here 27 years later so I guess I'm a Londoner now.

Carla Borel is a London based portrait and fine art photographer. Her personal work addresses themes of transience, identity, community, isolation and loneliness. Her Stillsoho series has been described by Town magazine 'as one of the most iconic portrayals of London in recent years.' Born in Paris, raised in Las Vegas and a Hampshire village, she was formerly a croupier in Mayfair casinos; a bar tender at the French House in Soho; production assistant to legendary advertising photographer John Claridge; a gallery girl in London’s art world, working with influential curator Emma Dexter; and assistant to Beat Generation expert, Barry Miles. Her work has been published in AnOther Man, Harper's Bazaar, German Vogue, L'Uomo Vogue, Port, Town, Elephant, the Daily Telegraph and the Guardian. She recently had a solo exhibition of male portraits, Homme Libre, in London, was in the London Calling Photocopy Club exhibition and was included in Conceal/Reveal at Photo Oxford.