Open House Festival 2023
The Open House Festival is an annual London-wide celebration of London’s homes, architecture and neighbourhoods.
With 365,000 visits in a single weekend, the Open House Festival is the largest celebration of urban landscape in the world, staged by the charity Open City with the aim of making London a more accessible, equitable, and open city for all. For the full details, visit the Open House website.
How did Hounslow take part?
This year the festival took place from 6-17 September and Hounslow had a strong presence, with 52 free events taking place across the borough in 16 venues. Those venues opened their doors to showcase Hounslow’s diverse communities, both as they have been in the past and as they are now, and included industrial infrastructure, historic houses, Council buildings, mosques, Sikh temples, and more.
The passions and interests of our residents were reflected in the types of events that took place this year: exhibitions of local art, guided tours with architects, walking tours with knowledgeable locals, workshops such as a crochet taster session and musical events including an 18th century concert for recorder, viola da gamba, cello and harpsichord.
The Council worked with the festival organiser, Open City, and participating venues to identify neighbourhoods within Hounslow so that clusters of venues could be promoted together. Stories began to emerge that wove together into neighbourhood histories. The vision is to identify and encourage more neighbourhoods to get involved, to continue to broaden Hounslow’s offer.
We would like to thank you everyone who took part as a host, a visitor or participant by working together to make the festival such a special one.
