SXSW arts and tech festival leaves Texas for a jaunt in east London Week-long ‘Olympics of the mind’ next summer will showcase cutting-edge film, gigs, talks and much more.
Barack Obama, Johnny Cash, Matthew McConaughey, Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerburg have all taken a turn at addressing its crowds, but now the Texan culture and tech festival that likes to predict the future is to become a bona fide East Ender.
It may not be near the desert, and there won’t be so many baseball caps on show, but the huge annual festival in Austin that has become famous for music, film and cutting-edge invention and design is now preparing to take over the streets of Shoreditch.
The event, styled as a kind of “Olympics of the mind”, with fashion and music thrown into the mix, has come to London rather than elsewhere in Europe “because of its multicultural aspects”, Arnander says.
The European edition of South by Southwest has opened to applications from contributors and audiences around the world before its inaugural London event next summer.
