Festivals For All
By Kaan Hiini
With the Best Awards Nominations fresh for our perusal, and the fast approaching one-two combo of NZ Fashion Week and We Can Create (not to mention its plethora of side events), we’re being spoiled for choice when it comes to local design events. Or are we?
While I’m hesitant to take the stance of a whining child crying out for more toys, if you don’t ask you wont receive. Would a design festival have any chance of succeeding on our shores?
I’ve been fortunate enough to experience one of the bigger design festivals the world has to offer: The London Design Festival. It was spread out across much of the sprawling metropolis, and tackled a wide variety of designery subjects.
In addition to the exhibitions you would expect of such a festival(which made up the majority of the programme), workshops, seminars, Q&A’s, challenges and discussions were held, as well as gatherings which enabled designers of all ages to mix and mingle, providing young designers with the opportunity to meet and build relationships with more experienced designers.
Pop up boutique stores also proved popular, and various high profile figures were recruited to produce one off pieces distributed throughout the programmes many sites. Meanwhile markets, pub quizzes, and scavanger hunts provided a less formal side.
The list goes on(this years events number over 200), but my main point is the festival was engaging for everyone, be you designer, creative or average bro. As well as providing designers with opportunities for healthy conversation and chances to interact and get involved with each other, the festival curated events that drew in members of the public and asked them to participate in the design conversation, presenting them with a greater understanding of the industry and it’s impact on the modern world.
Similar festivals in Melbourne, Berlin and LA, to name just a few, have recently taken place, while London’s festival is due to start mid September.
Design related gatherings appear to be growing in popularity in this country, if events such as Urbis Design Day, the addition of We Can Create to the annual calendar and numerous creative conferences are anything to go by. And these guys tell us creatives, an audience that could find such a festival attractive, make up a sizeable portion of the Auckland workforce.
While it goes without saying as a smaller, more isolated audience any festival we could pull together would be much smaller in scale then most of the examples I’ve listed, and it would take a hell of a lot of work, I feel in the long term such an investment would be worthwhile, helping our local design community develop into a more close knit network and showcasing our world class design skills. Also, as I experienced in London, it could be pretty fun.
But is it plausible or just a pipedream? As noted here and here, our design community doesn’t seem to be the most engaged on the planet.
What do you think? Can we handle something like this? Would you support it?
Courtesy of Design Assembly / conversations on graphic design.
