Jo Jackson, Kate Harwood & Kristjana S. Williams of Beyond the Valley do what many set out to do and fail; curate, design, sell stuff and make a living from it. What’s more, they actively support and promote new talent. Visit their shop at any time of year and you're sure to find great new products… So what’s different during theLondon Design Festival? Robert Urquhart of Designers are Wankers finds out.

What’s happening with Beyond the Valley this year and what’s new from last year?

We’ve been involved in the London Design Festival for three years, which is as long as we’ve been going. The first year we held a Victorian freak show and gave the space to 15 designers to create something.

Last year we hosted a Show Studio event (Nick Knights’ studio) with live installation with interactive video projection, but this year we wanted to return to something we’re used to doing - hosting a space.

We’re using two shops - the one at 9 Newburgh Street and also at 2 Ganton Street. We’re featuring work by designers including Ana Rocha, Christopher Raeburn, DIY Kyoto, Farm Design, Garudio Studiage, Graham McLaughlin, Mr Jones, Natthakur and Tim Watkins.

We’ve got a new business called Beyond the Valley Insight, which is a consultancy. Our business partners are the branding experts called i-am. They work with retail environments – rather than coming up with just the logo they deal with the whole science of shopping, and what came out of the collaboration was Inverted.

What can we expect to see?

We wanted something to celebrate the new business, provide a showcase for the shop and the designers. We called it ‘Inverted’ because we were matching up people that you wouldn’t normally expect to see together. We left it to the designers to come with their own interpretations. There’s some great stuff - not quite what you expect; flat pack pets, hot dog handbags... that sort of thing.

We are also using the spaces as workshops for all the designers involved – i-am will help develop branding for the designers too. We like to learn as we go, and to help others too.

How do you feel about the London Design Festival?

The LDF have good intentions! There is other stuff out there too during the festival. Icon magazine have a guide which is worth a look and has a larger audience built up throughout the year. The London Design Festival have a small team. It needs more investment!

I was really impressed by the events around the Architecture Festival this year. I’d like to see more big events dedicated to the design festival. Something large scale at the London Design Festival would be great.

Why is the design festival on at the same time as Fashion week? The headlines are going to go to fashion week in all the papers rather than designers…

What do you recommend seeing (and avoiding) at this year’s festival?

I like the smaller independent spaces. I love the game of hide and seek that goes on. Established & Sons - I’m hoping they are going to do something interesting there.

I’m not excited about Tent. I’m hoping that I’m proved wrong but I wasn’t last year...

Designersblock - I’m really impressed with how that’s developed and the fact that they’ve got an amazing location in Covent Garden. We looked at it last year and it was overwhelming for us, a mammoth task. It's guys like them that can make large scale projects take off!

The shows run until Saturday 27 September. For more information and opening times visit here.  Next week I’ll be interviewing Piers Roberts & Rory Dodd of Designersblock.

All additional photographs by Morgan O'Donovan for urbanjunkies.com