The Village Fete

Part country fair, part a sale of home-grown and locally made produce, part a celebration of village community, the English fête is a social institution which seems forever locked in some idyll of rural Englishness, unchanged since the 1920s. The English regard their fêtes as the moral triumph of amateurism - that kind of 'backbone of the nation, it's the little things that count' mentality, which is weaved inextricably into the national mythology. America has the rodeo, where man and beast pit strength and wits; England has pots of gooseberry jam and the chance to throw a wet sponge at a scout master. Ultimately, both define a national tic.

The broader mythology of the village fête articulates an antiquated class system - villagers from little cottages, squire and gentry from neighbouring estates - and has become a favourite preservative for notions of English heritage. Kept alive in television adaptations of the detective stories of Agatha Christie and the comedies of P. G. Wodehouse and E. F. Benson - all dating, once again, from the 1920s and 30s - the fête declares the local to be somehow universal: an archaic English maxim equates love of village with love of country, and love of country equals love of God.

Sin, in these terms, is to champion the individual over the individual's place within the group. Hence, in the comedies of Wodehouse or Benson, the idea that a person might try to cheat in the 'Biggest Marrow Competition' (for example) at their local fête, is tantamount to treason. Their crime becomes mock heroic - a monumental incident conveyed in delicate images - and thus could be perceived as another form of Camp.

But how does the village fête exist within the neo-swinging, post-post-Modern age? One answer can be found on one of the many web-sites which local fête committees, as well as organisations such as The Women's Institute, are posting to advertise their activities. But the fête remains resistant to the rhetoric of the web: the sites have become a virtual parish notice board, indurate to funky dot-com styling.

'Village Fête' - organised by Scarlet Projects and curated by Claire Catterall - was held over one weekend in the Italiante-looking Pirelli Gardens in the inner court of the Victoria and Albert Museum. Inviting the participation of an eclectic selection of contemporary designers, it took received ideas about the English village fête and contemporary design, and played them off against each other in a brilliantly witty and thought-provoking display of craft and activity.

Confounding the image of contemporary design as a somewhat humourless, academically rigid medium, held in place by a pristine aesthetic of moodily-lit shelves and exquisite cabinets, 'Village Fête' invited designers to orginate themes, objects and activities which put a conceptual spin on our notion of the fete, thus re-routing design to ideas of cottage industry and a local market - to the ethos of proud amateurism, in fact, which could be seen as an anathema to design's sense of itself.

'Village Fête' performed the fascinating task of exchanging the traditional elements of sophistication, exclusivity and luxury, usually ascribed to the received idea of design, for a defiantly low-fi aesthetic and a sense of direct participation. Rather than the image of the designer as a withdrawn philosopher/scientist, dressed in designer casuals and wearing titanium framed glasses, participants were re-cast as stall holders. In the glorious case of Mike Watson and Jon Morgan of 'Bump', they dressed in tarpaulin coats and tweed caps as they conducted their 'Splat The Rat' game. Other notables included FAT's architectural cake stall, Lifeform's 'Beat The Buzzer' head-set, and Maria Beddoes and Paul Khera's 'anti-materialist' elixirs.

On the one hand, 'Village Fête' could be regarded as an exercise in targetted flippancy - neo-punk yokels come to educate the Athens of the Victoria and Albert Museum. On the other, the event passed comment on the spectacles of luxury consumerism which now comprise the contemporary 'village' of up-market retail - that infantilist urge in well-heeled shoppers to surround themselves with what Edina from Absolutely Fabulous summarised as 'gorgeous little things, darling'. In this much, the fete raised fundamental questions about the image, purpose and practice of design, and it made its case in a witty and stylish way.