I went looking for inspiration. I found connection.

Author: Andy Upton, Art Director

I arrived in Berlin with plenty of recommendations ringing in my ears from friends and colleagues: ‘It’s really arty’, ‘It’s right up your street’ and so on, and they weren’t wrong.

The main reason for the trip was Forward Festival—two packed days of creativity, design and enough inspiration to keep my camera roll busy for quite some time. But if you followed my trip to the Vienna edition a couple of years ago, you’ll know I’m not very good at simply travelling from hotel to conference venue and back again. After all, that was partly the point of coming here.

Before the trip, I wrote about the importance of getting away from the screen every now and then and experiencing creativity out in the real world. Berlin turned out to be a pretty good place to practise what I preach.

Between conference sessions, I squeezed in as much wandering as possible, taking in the architecture, buildings and street art along the way. It’s a city with an incredible visual energy. There always seemed to be something worth stopping for, looking at and (inevitably) photographing.

Forward Berlin was on a much bigger scale than the Vienna edition I’d previously experienced. The line-up alone featured more than 50 speakers across three stages, alongside workshops and a packed expo area, which unexpectedly became one of my favourite parts of the whole event.

Artists and independent magazines were selling their work alongside product demonstrations, but more importantly, there were opportunities to actually make things. Screen printing, sticker making, risograph collaging and tufting. Rather than simply walking around looking at other people’s work, you could get involved, have a go and probably come away with something you hadn’t planned on making.

Looking back, that hands-on side of the festival feels quite important. It created a space where people weren’t simply consuming creativity. They were making, talking, sharing, learning alongside one another, and connecting—which was a refrain that continued to repeat.

With so many speakers and three stages running across the two days, deciding who to see became something of an art form in itself.

Day one jumped between all kinds of creative disciplines, from code-based visual expression to creative journalism, but one idea stayed with me in particular: our analogue and digital worlds don’t have to sit in opposition.

The talk from Supersense captured that brilliantly, exploring work that combines the two and touching on the renewed appetite for formats such as Polaroid photography and vinyl records.

It was a nice reminder that adopting new technology doesn’t necessarily mean abandoning what came before. The interesting bit often happens when you find new ways of putting the two together. Which brings me to day two.

Day two somehow managed to dial the energy up again. It started, for me at least, with another visit to the printing area. This time I actually managed to get my hands on a blank T-shirt and make something of my own.

Then it was back into the talks.

Future Deluxe, Gemma O’Brien and Greek design studio Beetroot were particular standouts for me, each with beautiful work but very different creative journeys.

Beetroot’s talk especially stuck with me. Their work showed how creativity can be rooted in the culture and heritage immediately around us, rather than always looking elsewhere for inspiration. Just as interesting was the way they talked about their own studio as something that could connect with the community around it, incorporating a café, shop and event space rather than simply being somewhere people disappeared into to work.

Suddenly, a theme that had been bubbling away across the two days became much clearer.

Before arriving in Berlin, I’d half-expected an AI onslaught. And it would have been understandable. We’re living through a period when seemingly every conversation about creativity eventually finds its way to AI, emerging technology and what either might mean for the future of our industry.

But the thing I found most interesting about Forward Festival was almost the opposite. Again and again, the conversations seemed to come back to people: making things together, learning from one another, connecting with our local communities, rediscovering physical processes and using our creativity to contribute to something beyond ourselves.

That doesn’t mean rejecting AI or the digital world. Far from it. One of my biggest takeaways from the first day was precisely how exciting digital and analogue can be when they work together.

But perhaps as technology becomes more capable, the human side of creativity becomes more important, not less. Two days at a design festival reminded me that creativity is still, fundamentally, a very human thing. Maybe I shouldn’t have been quite so surprised by that.

I went to Berlin looking for inspiration. I found plenty of it in the work, the city, the talks and the things people were making. But the bit I’ve come home thinking about most is the people themselves, and what can happen when we make the effort to get out there, share ideas and make things together.

Turns out you can’t bookmark that.

Berlin and Forward Festival, you did not disappoint.