On Future Forum, the extraordinary first year of Town Hall, and why the future of London, Britain and Europe is already here.
I have seen the future. It is here.
By Joseph D’Anna, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Town Hall by Bottaccio
This week, alongside my Co-Founder and Managing Partner, Emilie Edberg, I had the privilege of welcoming Future Forum to Town Hall.
Standing in Vision Hall, looking out at a room filled with people who have dedicated themselves to challenging conventions, advancing ideas and imagining a different tomorrow, I found myself reflecting on the extraordinary journey that has brought us here.
We are still in our first year of operation. Much of our building is still coming to life. There is an enormous amount of work ahead of us, and certainly no shortage of challenges. Yet, looking around that room, I felt something difficult to describe, but impossible to ignore.
I was seeing the future. And the extraordinary thing is that the future is not in the future at all. It is already here.
Joseph D’Anna and Emilie Edberg welcome Future Forum to Town Hall
A home for those who dare to dream
When we first embarked on the extraordinary adventure of bringing London’s historic King’s Cross Town Hall back to life, our ambition was never simply to restore a building or create another venue.
We wanted to create a platform.
A platform for artists, entrepreneurs, scientists, thinkers, creators and dreamers. For those who refuse to accept the world as something merely happening to them, beyond their influence or control, and instead believe firmly in their own power to transform it.
A place where culture and commerce would coexist, where technology would meet philosophy, where business would engage with art, and where ideas from seemingly distant disciplines would collide and give birth to something entirely new.
Above all, we wanted to create a place where people would not simply come to observe the future, but become protagonists in its creation.
When different worlds become one
Over the past months, we have had the privilege of seeing this vision begin to take shape.
Within the same walls, we have welcomed some of the world’s most influential companies and individuals. From the architects of tomorrow at NVIDIA, with Jensen Huang presenting his vision of a United Kingdom at the centre of the AI revolution, to OpenAI, AMD, Meta and Google; from the lifestyle brands that shape our everyday lives, such as Nike, Adidas and Lululemon, to the great houses of luxury, including Prada, Rolex and Hermès, and the emerging designers of the future from Central Saint Martins.
Our halls have resonated with the music of legends such as Brian May and Roger Taylor, while the extraordinary artistic visions of Elmgreen & Dragset, Jonathan Yeo and James Turrell have brought new dimensions to our spaces.
We have seen Vision Festival bring together an entire neighbourhood alongside organisations and individuals shaping the future of media, technology, sport, business and culture. And, equally importantly, we have opened our doors to charities, local communities, educational organisations and people whose contribution to society is measured not by commercial success, but by the lives they touch and the opportunities they create for others.
What excites me most is not any one of these extraordinary names or events. It is the fact that they are all happening together, under the same roof, as part of the same unfolding story.
There is something profoundly powerful in this convergence, because perhaps the greatest breakthroughs of our time will not emerge from disciplines working in isolation, but from the unexpected encounters between them.
And perhaps what we need most are places that make those encounters possible.
The future is not in the future
We live in a period in which the conversation about the future of Britain and Europe is too often dominated by what we are losing.
We speak of economic uncertainty, technological disruption, declining competitiveness and the challenges facing our communities, cities and institutions.
These challenges are real. But I cannot help feeling that, in concentrating so much on what might go wrong, we risk overlooking the extraordinary things already going right.
London remains one of the world’s great meeting points of ideas, talent and ambition. Britain continues to bring together extraordinary creative industries, scientific institutions, entrepreneurs and cultural organisations, while Europe possesses an unparalleled depth of artistic heritage, intellectual tradition and human ingenuity.
Our greatest opportunity is not to compete with the rest of the world by becoming an imitation of somewhere else. It is to recognise the extraordinary power of what we already are, and to bring those strengths together in ways we have not yet imagined.
Technology needs culture. Innovation needs imagination. Enterprise needs purpose. And progress, if it is to mean anything, must ultimately place the individual back at its centre.
The future of Europe will not be determined in government chambers, corporate boardrooms or research laboratories alone. It will be shaped in the spaces where these worlds meet, where ideas are challenged, where unexpected relationships are formed, and where individuals discover that what once appeared impossible is, in fact, within their reach.
This is the London I believe in. Not the London of some distant future, but the London that exists here, now.
Not a city living on the greatness of its past, but one using that greatness as the foundation for something entirely new.
Why Future Forum matters
This is why welcoming Future Forum to Town Hall feels particularly meaningful.
Its very spirit speaks to the belief upon which we founded this project: that the future belongs to those willing to take responsibility for it, challenge established thinking and dare to dream of what comes next.
There is a wonderful symbolism in bringing such a gathering into a historic civic building.
For generations, the walls of this Town Hall witnessed people coming together to debate, to disagree, to make decisions and to shape the direction of their community.
Today, the conversations may be about artificial intelligence, the future of work, culture, leadership, technology or the evolution of society, but the underlying purpose remains remarkably similar.
To bring people together in the belief that our collective future can be shaped by the choices we make today, and that a building created for civic life can become, once again, a place for collective imagination.
For Emilie and me, and for everyone who has worked so tirelessly to bring Town Hall to life, this is an especially important moment. Not because it marks the completion of our journey, far from it, but because it offers a glimpse of what that journey was always meant to achieve.
The world is such because you are such
There is a principle at the heart of our philosophy, one that has guided our Group since its foundation by Elio D’Anna, and which has become inseparable from the way we approach everything we create.
“The world is such because you are such.”
It is a deceptively simple idea, but one that carries an extraordinary responsibility: that the world we experience is, in a profound sense, a reflection of our own state of being, of our beliefs, our imagination, our fears and our capacity to act.
If we wish to change the world, we must first have the courage to change ourselves.
This is not simply a philosophical proposition. For us, it is a way of living, of building businesses, of creating places and, ultimately, of understanding the role of the individual in society.
I see what is happening at Town Hall as a reflection of something much larger that is happening across the world. The difference is that here, within these walls, it becomes concentrated, tangible, something you can reach out and touch.
The best is not ‘ahead of us’, as the famous saying goes – it is here, in what we choose to create in this very moment.
In the courage of an entrepreneur pursuing an impossible idea. In the imagination of an artist revealing something nobody else could see. In the generosity of those dedicating themselves to their communities. In the curiosity of people willing to sit alongside someone from an entirely different world and discover something new.
And in the extraordinary energy that is created when all these people find themselves in the same room.
We are only at the beginning of Town Hall’s story. We have much to learn, much to build and much still to prove. But after everything that has happened in these first months, I am more convinced than ever that the dream which brought us here was worth pursuing.
Not simply because of the extraordinary companies and individuals we have welcomed, the events we have hosted or the recognition this project is receiving, but because we are witnessing something much more important.
A place is becoming a platform. A building is becoming a meeting point for ideas. And a dream is becoming a reality.
Today, as Future Forum fills our halls with the people and ideas that will shape tomorrow, I cannot think of a more fitting expression of everything we hoped Town Hall could become.
The future is not waiting for us. It is already here. And today, it is here at Town Hall.
