The National Robert Foster Metal Prize exhibition showcases outstanding contemporary metalwork, highlighting how imagination, skilled making, thoughtful design and material exploration can shape the ways we see and engage with the world around us.
In the spirit of Dissent, the Prize celebrates artists and makers who bring individual perspectives to the medium. Featuring the work of 15 finalists from across Australia, the exhibition reflects the ways artists continue to question, reinterpret and evolve the possibilities of metal as a contemporary practice.
The National Robert Foster Metal Prize exhibition is presented in partnership by Craft + Design Canberra and F!nk + Co Director Gretel Harrison, with thanks to the Tall Foundation.
Join them to formally launch the 2026 Craft + Design Canberra Festival and celebrate the opening of four exciting exhibitions in the Craft + Design Canberra Gallery and Civic Square.
Opening | 6pm
Official Speeches | 6:30pm
Exhibition openings include
Exhibition | NEST | Design for a Displaced Future | Multiple Artists
Exhibition | EMERGENCY | Signal, Adapt, Repair | Multiple Artists
Exhibition | ROBERT FOSTER METAL PRIZE | Multiple Artists
Exhibition | SMALL RITUALS | Hand Carved, Handheld | Senden Blackwood
Exhibition | SOFT MATTER | Isabelle Mackay-Sim
The 2026 Craft + Design Canberra Festival runs from 5 - 15 November. Presenting an innovative program of exhibitions and events responding to the theme of Dissent, the Festival celebrates Canberra as a creative capital and a global city of design.
Connecting Canberra's community with over 500 artists, craftspeople and designers, the 2026 Festival advocates for creativity as a powerful tool for questioning, challenging and reshaping societal norms.
Life drawing comes to Contentious Character on the Kingston Foreshore with a relaxed evening session that blends creativity, good company and a great glass of wine. Presented by The Tipsy Sketching Club, this event offers a fun and welcoming take on traditional life drawing in an intimate wine bar setting.
Guests sketch from live models across a series of timed poses, starting with quick warm-ups and building into longer, more relaxed drawings. The atmosphere is social and low pressure, encouraging curiosity, conversation and creative confidence at every level.
Contentious Character provides the perfect backdrop, with quality wines available to enjoy throughout the session and plenty of breaks to chat, laugh and share work. Drawing materials can be supplied, or guests are welcome to bring their own favourite tools and mediums.
The Australian Haydn Ensemble is well known for its thrilling performances of historical chamber arrangements of large-scale symphonies. Performed up close and on historical instruments, they bring you as close as possible to the sound-world that composers like Beethoven and Haydn knew and loved.
Be amazed at what the seven superb musicians of the Australian Haydn Ensemble create, in this all-Haydn program.
The inventive Danish/Australian trio Number Junky return with Composure, their third album, taking their new music on a national Australian tour. The trio of Kristian Borring (guitar), Zac Grafton (double bass) and Peter Evans (drums) have toured extensively across Australia in recent years, including a featured performance at the Perth International Jazz Festival in 2024.
Number Junky have become known for combining exciting rhythms and unusual time signatures with lyrical melodies, rich harmony and a strong sense of interplay. Led by internationally acclaimed guitarist Kristian Borring, the trio brings together three distinctive musicians whose performances balance intricate compositions with spontaneity and improvisation.
Following the critical success of their second album Birak, Composure presents a new collection of original music and modern arrangements of standards and classical hymns, continuing to develop the trio's distinctive sound. The album launch marks the beginning of another national tour, bringing Number Junky's dynamic live performances to audiences around Australia.
Join Queer Flicks, a vibrant film series of LGBTIQA+ community favourites. A welcoming, inclusive space sets the scene for connection, conversation and shared movie moments. With dedicated pre-screening time to unwind, these events are as much about gathering as they are about great cinema.
Enjoy drinks from Dom's deli and bar, entertainment and time to mingle before the screening.
Guests are given time to settle in and soak up the atmosphere before the film.
Special guest Q&As bring audiences behind the scenes of some of the season's most exciting screenings. Hear directly from the creatives behind the work, including local filmmaker Rob Nugent following Signatures of Earth, artist and director Jonathan Zawada and musician Mark Pritchard after Tall Tales, and Wolf Cat Fever director Josh Collins and costume designer Babzotica. These engaging conversations offer unique insights into the creative process, artistic collaboration and the stories that shape the films on screen.
Indulge in an evening with world-renowned burlesque artist, Jazida, at Bar Beirut. Known for electrifying audiences with her specialty in fire and fans, Jazida brings her mesmerising artistry to an intimate Canberra setting.
For more info and to book, visit the website.
Clothing the Loop: Circular Design Festival - where fashion meets activism, performance meets purpose, and dissent becomes a work of art. Across one vibrant weekend of ticketed and free events, Clothing the Loop unfolds as a spectacular evening event and a full day of activities including; panel talks, clothes swaps, installations and practical workshops celebrating sustainable fashion, circular design, live performance and creative activism.
Presented by Australian Dance Party, Kelli Donovan and Canberra Institute of Technology, and held on the first weekend of the Craft + Design Canberra Festival, experience runway glamour, edgy contemporary dance, sensorial music and stimulating conversation, inviting powerful dialogue towards change.
Clothing the Loop is a positive act of dissent, a joyful rebellion against the waste and over-consumption that define fast fashion. The festival re-imagines what it means to design, wear, and value clothing and textiles, re-framing them as a medium for care, creativity, and collective action.
The opening evening event is a glamorous convergence of sustainable fashion by leading local and national designers, brought to life through immersive and electric live dance and music performances that echo themes of circularity.
During the daytime program, audiences take part in hands-on workshops, design installations, age and ability inclusive tour, and auslan interpreted panel discussions that explore circular design in fashion, interior design and design for live performance.
2026 marks the 60th anniversary of Decimal Currency, designed by Australian industrial designer Stuart Devlin and minted here in Canberra at the Royal Australian Mint. To mark the year, the Mint presents an in-conversation event with coin designers Neve Foxcroft and Lydia Ashe.
They will unpack the craft and process behind designing a coin, sometimes beginning as a pencil sketch, often still using the tools Devlin employed in his own designs, and incorporating modern technologies. Coins produced at the Royal Australian Mint connect design and storytelling with community, and they talk about how they use design and brand to share Australian stories. They talk about the collaborative nature of their production facility and the design of their production processes for safety and sustainability.
People don't wake up wanting a higher floor space ratio. They want convenience, belonging, safety, opportunity, beauty, and the freedom to move easily through everyday life.
As part of the Craft + Design Canberra Festival theme of Dissent, this conversation asks whether the things that matter most are being measured. As Canberra grows and changes, is the focus on the metrics that are easier to count, or on the things that make the city a better place to live?
This discussion will explore how the measures used influence the places created, and whether it is time to broaden the way success is defined.
Curated and chaired by Catherine Carter of Salon Canberra, in partnership with the Suburban Land Agency. Presented by the Suburban Land Agency as part of the 2026 Craft + Design Canberra Festival.
Dissent by Design explores creativity as a form of Dissent: the way artists, designers, activists and storytellers use their practice to resist, imagine and rebuild. Across an afternoon of talks and conversation, it asks how the work of designing, building, making and imagining becomes a powerful response to climate pressure, social injustice and unsustainable systems, and how making itself can be an act of witness and resistance and a proposition for the world we want next.
The afternoon brings together leading voices across craft, design, art, performance and dance and closes with the world premiere of a new dance film by Tamzin Nugent.
Alison Page, Tal Fitzpatrick, Anna Madeleine Raupach, Rob Hopkins, Mammalian Diving Reflex (Isabel Ahat + Fjoralba Qerimaj), Tamzin Nugent | facilitated by Jenny Edwards
