Open City Announces Guest Curators of the Open House Festival 2025

Open House Festival 2025 returns to the capital this autumn from 13 - 21 September, featuring hundreds of free open days and tours across all 33 London boroughs and the chance to uncover and explore London’s remarkable buildings and landscapes

As part of the festival, guest curators are invited to select ten buildings, spaces, and events spotlighting a distinct theme of their choosing within London, in a bid to introduce the 2025 festival to new audiences and bring fresh perspectives to the programme.

Sahra Hersi is an artist and spatial designer, and she describes her work as ‘caring about people, places, art & architecture, in that order’. Her work is public and ranges in scales from publications, workshops, public realm interventions, and buildings.

She seeks to establish a working philosophy that is driven by the desire to reinterpret architectural methodology and artistic narrative as common ground. Her practice explores shared spaces, the public realm, collaboration, and community engagement. Her work is often born out of engaging with local communities and the places they occupy.

Sahra works with local authority clients, cultural institutions, and third sector organisations across the UK and beyond.

Justine Simons OBE is Deputy Mayor for Culture and the Creative Industries. She has played a central role in the cultural transformation of London for two decades. She was awarded an OBE in 2015 by Her Majesty the Queen Elizabeth for Services to Culture in London.

Justine founded and is Chair of the World Cities Culture Forum – the principle leadership network on culture and the future of cities, now grown to 45 global cities reaching across six continents.

She led the capital’s biggest ever festival for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games with over 5000 events and is now overseeing its legacy. East Bank in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, is a new £1 billion culture and education district, the most significant for over 150 years.

She shapes London’s Investment Strategy for the Creative Industries covering film, fashion, games and design, growing their influence on the world stage. She has designed new policy innovations including the world’s first Creative Enterprise Zones, a new Culture at Risk Office to protect fragile cultural infrastructure, established the London Borough of Culture and hardwired culture into London’s planning system with the first Cultural Infrastructure Plan. 

Justine established the Fourth Plinth as the UK’s biggest public sculpture prize, is co-chair of London’s Commission for Diversity in the Public Realm and chaired the Mayor’s Suffrage Statue Commission placing the first statue of a woman in Parliament Square, suffrage campaigner Millicent Fawcett. She positioned culture at the heart of the Let’s Do London recovery campaign, attracting 800,000 visitors and bringing London back to life post pandemic.

Jos Boys has been a life-long design activist. She is co-director of The DisOrdinary Architecture Project, an informal platform bringing together disabled artists with built environment educators and practitioners to critically and creatively re-think access and inclusion.

Originally trained in architecture, she was co-founder of Matrix feminist architecture and research collective in London UK in the 1980s. She has also been a journalist, researcher, consultant, educator, photographer, and artist.

Jos’s work centres on co-developing creative interventions that challenge norms about who gets valued and who doesn’t (in society, in the design of built space, and in architecture as a discipline).

Claudia Kenyatta CBE joined Historic England as Director of Regions in 2018, and has been appointed Chief Executive of the organisation as of November this year, job-sharing with Emma Squire.

Before Historic England, Claudia was a Director in the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, most recently as Director of Corporate Strategy responsible for strategy and planning, governance, evidence and analysis and oversight of the Department’s 45 Arm’s Length Bodies.

Before joining DCMS senior civil service in 2007 she worked in a range of Government Departments, with roles on social exclusion policy, neighbourhood renewal and in private office. Claudia was awarded a CBE for services to heritage, including her leadership of the Historic England’s groundbreaking high streets renewal programme. Alongside her role at Historic England, Claudia is Chair of the Board of Trustees at Battersea Arts Centre in London and, with Emma, a member of the Mayor of London’s Cultural Leadership Board.

Emma Squire CBE joined Historic England in November 2023 starting a job-share with Claudia Kenyatta as Director of Regions, and has been appointed Chief Executive of the organisation as of November this year (continuing the job-share with Claudia).

Before this Emma spent nearly six years as Director of Arts, Heritage and Tourism at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport responsible for policy on the art market, culture, heritage, tourism, libraries, museums, treasure and cultural diplomacy. Her role included sponsoring 28 Arm’s Length Bodies and agencies such as Arts Council England, the National Lottery Heritage Fund and Historic England itself.

Emma led for Government on the £1.59bn Covid pandemic Culture Recovery Fund that supported over 5000 cultural and heritage organisations to survive the pandemic and for which she was awarded a CBE. Emma has been a senior civil servant since 2009, with roles on local growth, trade and as Principal Private Secretary to the Business Secretary. Alongside her role at Historic England, Emma is Chair of the Board of Trustees at Bridport Museum in West Dorset and, with Claudia, a member of the Mayor of London’s Cultural Leadership Board.

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