Liberty opened on Regent Street in 1875, selling fabrics, ornaments and objects from around the world. From the start, founder Arthur Lasenby Liberty wanted to do more than follow existing taste. His ambition was to introduce people to new makers, materials and ideas – and help create what came next.

That instinct shaped the business that followed.

Liberty became closely associated with artists, designers and craftspeople, while its fabrics developed an identity that stretched well beyond the store itself. Its design studio continues to work with an archive built across generations, treating heritage not simply as something to preserve, but as something to keep creating from.

The building tells a similar story. Liberty’s Tudor Revival flagship opened on Great Marlborough Street in 1924, constructed using timber from HMS Impregnable and HMS Hindustan. Designed around intimate rooms and atriums rather than a conventional department-store floorplan, it became a design landmark in its own right.

That combination of retail, craft, design and cultural discovery is what makes Liberty a natural setting for Future Forum.

Liberty has always been a shop. It has just never behaved like only one.