As you know, the Open House Festival celebrates our curiosity for what happens inside the buildings that we walk past everyday; a festival that works to give all Londoners the chance to learn from the city’s best architecture and the people behind it.

Championing openness, access and learning, the festival is not only a celebration but has considerable positive social and economic impact on London and Londoners. Almost 90% of those who open their building or space do so because they think it's an important part of living or working in London.

Over the last 30 years, the Open House Festival has been possible because of the generosity and brilliance of the people who run open days and open buildings, our community of Contributors. Your energy—and your conviction that, by opening up and sharing your building or space, we can all learn from each other—is what drives the Open House Festival.

Being a Contributor in 2023: what’s different?

For 2023, we want to build on all the work you’ve done over the years to open-up London and achieve the mission of making the city more equitable and accessible. Using the feedback you shared with us at the end of the last festival, we are working to make changes to the elements of the festival that impact you the most.

We want to support you to open with confidence, share what’s important and special to you, and help us champion the charity’s mission. 

Support and resources

In the feedback you shared with us at the end of last year’s festival, you asked for more support from the team during the process. In response we have created a Festival Brief and Criteria. These open-source documents offer transparency, sets out what we are looking for and what you need to do to create a successful submission for the 2023 festival.

This year we invite you to have a look at these two supporting documents and create your plans for this year's festival in response to the brief and criteria, where appropriate. If you have questions or want to talk it through, come to a drop-in or online surgery.

Early bird Submission

In May, the early bird Submissions open for a month. If you get your Submission completed in May and before the deadline of the 1st of June you will be part of our early bird Submissions. This means you will get a number of extra things that should make your opening even more successful, for instance you are more likely to be included in our press and marketing outputs, your listing will be published first so it has a higher chance for people to see it and you are guaranteed to get festival promotional materials.

You will see that the Open Call for new Proposals opens in April, but you don’t need to do anything until May.

Get your Submission completed in May and before the 1st of June.

Presence across the city and two weekends

The feedback was that although the two weekends are great, Contributors missed the way everything in their neighbourhood was open at the same time.

We totally agree and so we have created three different tools to help create dense pockets of festival activity, similar to when it was just the one weekend.

💚 The first is guidance for which of the weekends it is best for you to open depending on what borough you are based in. By following this guidance, you will increase the chance of running your open day at the same time as others in your area. Please note, this is guidance; if you can’t open on that weekend, we’d still rather you submitted to be in the festival than not at all.

💚 The second is that if your Submission is approved, you will be able to see others in your area who have also been approved and when they are opening. If they are a public building and their details are online, you can also reach out to coordinate your openings or plan something at a neighbourhood level.

💚 Finally, we are continuing our Neighbourhood initiative. If at least five Contributors within walking distance of each other coordinate their openings and events, they will be published as a Neighbourhood collection when the site goes live in the summer.

💚It’s also worth noting that nearly 80% of last year’s Contributors said they would recommend their neighbours contribute to the festival, so use this opportunity to connect with your neighbours and invite them and others in your area to open-up too.

So, what now?

1. Get planning.

   The first thing to do is check the Brief and Criteria and make sure your plans for the festival respond to the Brief and hit as many elements of the Criteria as feasible (this will be resource and space dependent).

   Everything you need is on the Library of Resources page.

2. Early bird Submissions in May.

   Early bird Submissions open for a month in May. You will need to login using your existing logins to update your information and create your Submission.

   You do not need to wait to be contacted by the team with the invite link and please do not email the team to confirm you want to be in because we might miss it!

   You will see from our social media and newsletters that we are running an Open Call for new Proposals in April, but you don’t need to do anything until May.

   Submissions will open again in July and will be open for the Summer but we recommend getting your Submission in early.

3. Speak to your neighbours

   The festival is at its best when places within a close proximity run open-days and events at the same time. Reach out and see if others in your area are also up for running an open-day for the festival too.

4. Online Surgeries

   If you have questions or aren’t sure of the next steps, come to one of our online Surgeries where you can speak to the team about what to do. Click here to see more.

Festival database and website

We take on board your feedback about the database and website, and we have worked with the resources we have to develop the site as much as possible. Initially this will be to make it easier to create your Submission for your plans for this year. There are a number of different parts to the development and although the website will never quite be the Metaverse, these changes should be the start of making the site easier to use.

💚 In previous years, returning Contributors had to wait for an invite link to be sent from the team, and that one link was your access to the festival Submission form.

This has now changed. Rather than waiting for an invite link from the the festival team, you can go to the site in your own time, log-in, see your listings from previous years and update it with your plans for this year. Once you're happy with your plans and Submission form, you can submit them to the team for their feedback and approval.

💚 Secondly, we have created clearer windows of time for planning, Submissions and approvals. This way you have time to plan and prep your Submission using the resources online and festival team support via online Surgeries. You can then complete the online Submission form, submit your plans, and feedback and approvals will happen within 6 weeks.

💚 Finally, we are asking a few different questions as part of the Submissions so that we can better capture your plans. This means that the festival team can have a clearer understanding of your plans, plus give more valuable feedback, and so that, if approved, visitors can learn more from your web-listing.