As the home of cultural innovators, Somerset House connects creativity and the arts with wider society. It brings worlds and minds together to intensify creativity and multiply opportunity, driving artistic and social innovation at once.
The platform for its work is a neoclassical building at the heart of London with a long history of influence, ideas and counter-perspective. It has always been open to the world, and this spirit of constant curiosity remains at its heart. Today, as host to the UK’s largest creative community working globally across art, technology, business and social enterprise, it continually draws in fresh ideas and new talent. It enables surprising alliances, convergences and chance encounters, which move people and disciplines outside of themselves. This constant sideways take is also felt in its public programming which brings subjects and methods together in experimental forms. It celebrates differences and apparent incompatibilities with surprising, often magical results. Somerset House’s most iconic experiences, staged in its courtyard, cannot be created elsewhere. They mix the unusual, the transgressive and the joyful in the most original and memorable ways.
Somerset House pursues a spirit of ‘Step Inside, Think Outside’ for everyone, regardless of age, stage or background. It is a place to escape the comfort zone in the safest way. It freshens minds, eyes and the world at large. Its energy is unending - intensifying creativity, multiplying opportunity, driving artistic and social innovation, sometimes personal transformation, all at once.
