Discover Dissent in the Festival's Exhibition Program. 18 exhibitions and 1 provocation: what can design and making by hand resist, imagine, rebuild? Experience contemporary craft, design and visual art practice at its best.
23 October – 15 November 2026 | M16 Artspace
Bespoke Utopia presents Canberra artists whose practices embrace the principles of slow design that is grounded in care, material knowledge and long-term thinking. Linking global conversations around sustainable design with Canberra’s rich craft history, the exhibition invites audiences to consider how design shapes everyday life and how thoughtful creative practices can challenge fast, disposable production models.
9 – 15 November 2026 | Miko Designs
Break // Make: UC x Miko is a multidisciplinary design collaboration between University of Canberra students and Miko Designs. Exploring Dissent, students challenge convention, blend tradition with technology and push the boundaries of craft, architecture and design to envision our sustainable and creative futures.
15 + 22 + 29 November 2026 | Such and Such
Such and Such presents Clubb Chess, a three day interactive exhibition celebrating contemporary artists and designers through the lens of a centuries old board game, encompassing the festival theme of ‘Dissent’. This exhibition brings together multiple industries across Canberra including architecture, furniture design, art, music and hospitality on the 15th, 22nd and 29th November 2026.
5 – 25 November 2026 | Canberra Glassworks
Delightly revives endangered scientific glassblowing skills, transforming salvaged laboratory glass into plasma-illuminated vessels. Harriet Schwarzrock creates objects whose luminous behaviour shifts with viewer proximity, taking science out of the museum. Darkened, subtly interactive installations offer multi-sensory wonder, merging curiosity with playful public engagement in glass and light.
1 – 28 November 2026 | Designcraft
Design Deviation celebrates the intentional mistake, showcasing furniture by Designcraft employees who have deliberately broken the rules of 'best practice' to discover new aesthetics in unusual materials and unconventional assembly.
7 – 8 + 14 – 15 November 2026 | National Film and Sound Archive
Digital Dissent is an interactive showcase of innovative microgames exploring dissent, presented by Canberra Game Developers Association (CanDev) and hosted by the National Film and Sound Archive (NFSA). Play the games, then join Digital Dissent in Discussion to hear local designers reflect on how Canberra’s game design community embraces dissent.
6 – 22 November 2026 | Queanbeyan Hive
A powerful act of dissent against the marginalisation of older voices, Elder Art is an exhibition of artworks by older members of the community. Through art and artist talks, the exhibition amplifies these voices, celebrating the richness that a long life and diverse experiences of history can bring to our shared community.
5 November – 12 December 2026 | Craft + Design Canberra
EMERGENCY: Signal, Repair, Adapt brings together artists and designers working across ceramics, glass, textiles and media to examine what it means to make objects in a time of disruption. A major exhibition that affirms the power of creative practice to imagine alternatives where established systems have failed.
5 November – 12 December 2026 | Craft + Design Canberra
The National Robert Foster Metal Prize exhibition celebrates 15 finalists from across Australia who are questioning, reinterpreting and evolving the possibilities of metal as a contemporary practice.
7 November 2026 | Canberra Spinners and Weavers
Join Rebecca Mayo and Canberra Spinners and Weavers for a special collaborative event as part of Living City: People, Plants and Place, supported by artsACT and the Australian National University School of Art and Design. Experience the Plant Sensibilia Machine, a large-scale, hand-operated textile dyeing device that brings the creative process from the studio to the public realm.
7 November 2026 – 30 January 2027 | Canberra Contemporary
POWER - The Future is Here is the result of a collaboration between Kamilaroi/Gamilaraay and Biripi artist Dennis Golding and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students from Alexandria Park Community School, who designed capes informed by their lived experiences and cultural identity.
7 November 2026 – 30 January 2027 | Canberra Contemporary
Quietly Seething: Fate, Fury and Transmutation is an immersive handcrafted installation inviting visitors to sit within a dazzling embroidered space while listening to the anonymous and deeply personal confessions of 60 female identifying and AFAB (assigned female at birth) people sharing their experiences of feminine rage.
6 – 18 November 2026 | Q Gallery
Want to ‘give the finger’ to actions (or inaction) that cause you distress? Sick of responding to issues and concerns with anger or sadness? Radical Joy can help you find humour and hope to communicate your concerns.
5 – 22 November 2026 | Canberra Airport
Raw and Refined presents new work by established contemporary jeweller Phoebe Porter, highlighting the origins of the materials she employs and the labour of making. The exhibition celebrates the handmade as an act of creative dissent, challenging consumerism, mass production and conventional notions of value through thoughtful, enduring design.
19 September 2026 – 31 January 2027 | Canberra Museum and Gallery
RELICS: A New World Rises transforms discarded and obsolete objects into intricate miniature civilisations built from LEGO® bricks. Through creativity, design and storytelling, creators Jackson Harvey and Alex Towler challenge assumptions about waste and value, giving forgotten materials new purpose and inviting audiences to reconsider consumption and obsolescence.
7 – 15 November 2026 | Grainger Gallery
In celebration of a maker whose vision continues to resonate as an enduring act of creative dissent, Robert Foster 10 Year Memorial Exhibition brings together 10 of Robert's most significant original works alongside new collaborative pieces by 10 artists whose practices were deeply shaped by his influence.
5 November – 12 December 2026 | Craft + Design Canberra
Senden Blackwood's hand-carved granite vessels challenge the culture of speed, mass production and disposability. Through painstaking craftsmanship, geometric forms and the enduring presence of stone, his work celebrates slow making, material intelligence and the lasting value of objects shaped by time, patience and the human hand.
5 November – 12 December 2026 | Craft + Design Canberra
A quiet act of dissent against the conventions that have long diminished craft, Soft Matter presents ceramic sculptures that challenge social and material hierarchies, embracing softness as a site of strength, complexity and possibility across the boundaries of craft, sculpture and still life.
23 October – 12 December 2026 | Tuggeranong Arts Centre
Dissenting the trend of mass manufactured consumer goods, Tuggeranong Arts Centre presents outstanding craft and design in three exhibitions that privilege slow craft to refute disposable consumerism in favour of intergenerational investment in quality crafted and designed objects.
