Richard Nicholas Hair Salon with Calderwood Gallery at Design Philadelphia photo via Core77
Okay, this happened a minute ago (or two), but it’s worth looking east for Design Philadelphia, eleven days of workshops, exhibitions, hardhat tours, and more involving 500+ Philly-based designers…that’s architects, furniture designers, hair designers (!), fashion designers, interactive designers, graphic designers, product designers, landscape designers, interior designers. There were even offshoot Slamdance-style design exhibitions running concurrently with Design Philadelphia. Universities were involved, galleries were involved…it was a truly ecumenical look at design and how the various threads of design overlap, intertwine, tug on one another, make an incredible tapestry and inform the good life in a city that cares to look.
Portland had her own design fest, the Portland Design Festival was launched in 2003 by the Design Collaborative a partnership between then-mayor Vera Katz’ office and Worksystems Inc. in recognition/support of the then buzzworded “creative economy.” (As with education, we can only have the conversation about design, about the larger creative community if we think about it in terms of economic development. Fine.) Katz is said to have noted at the time that Portland has more designers per capita than well, any other city. Even Philly.
Find a photo gallery here at Core77 and see the Design Philadelphia website for the breadth of participants and programs.
Last night at the Gerding Theater at the Armory, Commissioner Sam Adams hosted a town hall meeting (of 350+ arts and culture heavy- hitters) focusing on the “creative capacity” of our good city: How do we build it, how can the artists and designers advocate for themselves, how can the city support this direction for arts organizations and creative entrepreneurs. We need to see the overlaps between the design of the new adidas sneaker and the design of the new gallery in the Pearl District. We need to see where furniture design abstractly based on a sonata, enhances the experience of sitting in the lobby before the theater performance or reminds the sitter of the Anthony Caro in the tunnel in the Portland Art Museum. We need not only to recognize that the creative in all its forms is one of those intangibles that makes Portland so exciting, but that design in its many forms should join with art in its many forms to advocate for city support of the capital C.
The Portland Design Festival is not dead, only sleeping. The talent is certainly here.
For a place at the table in the conversation about the points at which the creative intersects the municipal and what each can do for the other, see here: creativecapacity.org
WHAT TO DO NOW?