Hot Town Summer in the City - Free Events Across NYC

Photo by Laura Hanifan, courtesy of  

City Parks Foundation Summer Stage 

Last Tuesday marked the first official day of summer and one of the best things about summer in New York City is the plethora of free events that abound.  The hardest thing, however, is figuring out how to track them all.  I've yet to find one comprehensive, easy-to-search  place online that lists absolutely everything, but I recently learned of of two great resources that list quite a lot.


The first is from a colleague of mine from grad school.  Check out her blog here and while there, subscribe to her Google Group for a weekly email (appropriately titled, "Hot Town Summer in the City"), which provides a long list of free art events across New York.  

The second is the calendar at One Percent for Culture's website.  If you're not familiar with them, One Percent for Culture is a fantastic organization that works to "demonstrate the value of culture to New York City" and is campaigning to get the city to designate at 1% of it's budget for nonprofit cultural organizations.  (Despite having an arts budget larger than those of some state governments, NYC currently only designates less than .25%)  If you're reading this blog, you likely already appreciate all that cultural organizations do for the city, so I don't mean to preach to the choir...but take advantage of this great resource, and if you haven't already signed their petition, do it - and help keep free arts events alive!

Engaging Your Guests: Creating Inspiration

Well, my goal was to publish once a week.  I'm already off track as I became entirely consumed with producing my own most recent event, NYU Wagner's 2011 Convocation Ceremony.  It was more work than I anticipated (isn't it always?) but lucky for me, our Keynote Speaker was entirely engaging and did something quite inspiring (more on that soon), which made the hard work worth it.  In the last two weeks of preparation for that event, I also attended an inspiring dinner party, as well as a not-so-inspiring fundraiser-slash-launch party for a new dance company.

And I got to thinking: what's the difference?

Why was I touched and moved by two of these events and not so moved by the other?

Don't get me wrong, the launch party was cool.  It was held on a rooftop in lower Manhattan.  They had: a DJ;  fantastic performance by two great dancers; interesting use of technology (video art of the dancers' movements projected on the wall); open bar; cool decor; a silent auction...  but I left feeling somewhat unfulfilled.  My friends claimed they had fun, and I suppose I was entertained.  But I didn't feel particularly connected to the dancers, the art, or their future.  So I left shrugging my shoulders.  Not a bad night.  Just not amazing.

What was amazing was connecting with old and new friends at a 30th birthday party (no surprise) and listening to a Convocation Keynote address that deeply inspired me (quite a nice surprise).

Having worked and watched five  consecutive Convocation ceremonies, it's easy to tune out during speeches. The Dean and Provost's remarks don't change that much.  The speaker always says something interesting, but anyone who does events would agree: one's attention span is variable after one works so hard to make the whole thing happen.  This year, however, our Keynote had my full attention.

Wagner's Keynote was actually more of a dialogue than an address, and it came about almost accidentally.  We had been holding out for a high profile speaker that turned us down at the last minute, and after scrambling to ask several more people who turned out to be unavailable, we turned to one of our Visiting Scholars, Irshad Manji.  Irshad did not want to prepare a speech - she's about to launch a book tour and had no time.  But she did agree to do it if there could be a little bit of back and forth with a handful of students.  Why not invite students to submit statements about what "moral courage" means and have them share during the ceremony? (NYU Wagner is a School of Public Service, and houses Irshad's Moral Courage Project).  Irshad could then do a riff on each student's statement (she's has an art when it comes to speaking on the fly).  That way, she doesn't have to prepare anything, and the back and forth creates a sense of energy in the auditorium.

Well, logistically, it was a nightmare.  We were one week out, and finding students, rehearsing them, adding technical elements (the students stayed in the audience and we projected video of them on a screen so everyone in the balconies could see their faces), meant extra long hours at work.  But as the moments played out during the ceremony, the crowd was enraptured.  Here was but something new and innovative.  Here was individuals opening up and speaking about something very personal.  Here was something the graduates could truly relate to - statements from their peers.  Here was a way to share with family and friends why these students pursue degrees at Wagner.  It was meaningful.  It was something you could talk about over lunch afterwards - and hopefully the conversations continue.  I can't take credit for the idea.  It was all Irshad's.  But I will say that I will definitely use this approach again in the future.

So what IS the difference?  What made this ceremony more inspiring than the launch party?

Engagement.  Finding ways to make everyone in attendance feel connected to what's going on.  Spectators are inspired when there is action that makes them excited (think of a home run at a baseball game).  Allow people to be a part of that action (the crowd leaping to their feet in cheers as the ball passes the stadium wall).  If you're going to speak, invite us to speak with  you.  If you're going to perform on a roof top, dance and then invite us to dance too.  If you're doing something cool, we want in.

New York City Festival Season & "Ideas for the New City"

April and May mark the beginning of the summer arts and cultural festival season in NYC.  From casual street fairs, to grand events such as River to River and the Lincoln Center Festival, there's never a dull weekend from May through September.  The Tribeca Film Festival kicked things off last week and this weekend, the New Museum and several organizing partners are presenting the inaugural Festival of Ideas for the New City.  New as it may be, as festivals go, this one is pretty comprehensive.   Comprised of a StreetFest, a Conference, and a myriad of "Projects," it features five days of panels, keynote speakers, exhibits, art installations, and other relevant endeavors exploring how to make a city more livable.  The event is described on the festival's website as "a major new collaborative initiative in New York involving scores of Downtown organizations, from universities to arts institutions and community groups, working together to affect change."  If you're an innovative thinker, an early adopter, or just want to explore some of the organizations that make downtown New York thrive, this is one not to be missed.  And as an early adopter, if you prefer your bike over taxis, you won't catch the teaser video that's playing this week in all yellow cabs - take a look:



Maybe I'll see you there!

The Universal Forum of Cultures - Barcelona, Spain, 2004: an exciting event with ambitious ideals or an extravaganza with mission creep too broad to succeed?

I first started asking myself the questions in the column to the left when I volunteered during the summer of 2004 at the Universal Forum of Cultures held in Barcelona, Spain.  Sponsored by UNESCO, Spain’s Ministry of Culture, and both the Barcelona and Catalunya governments, the Forum was a summer-long, international affair comprised of exhibitions, lectures, symposia, and artistic performances.  It had three broad and very lofty aims: to promote sustainable development, explore conditions necessary for creating a more peaceful global society, and celebrate cultural diversity.  The Forum featured academics, intellectuals, and other experts in a series of “dialogues” around several themes; produced large exhibitions exploring language, cities, the environment and our relationship to it, and cultural differences; and presented performances from collectives around the globe, ranging from street performers to some of the best known theater and dance companies in the world. 

As a former theater major, the opportunity to see works by Peter Brook, Robert Wilson, and some of the best avant-garde companies in Europe all at once was too good to pass up.  I was also inspired by the sheer breadth of the Forum, not to mention its ideals and aims.  The thought of a huge festival devoted to culture, diversity, sustainability, and peace, with a multitude of events and exhibits, and a magnitude of scale, thrilled me.

I had made my way to Barcelona bright-eyed and excited.  Though not long before the Forum was set to open, I discovered there were strong factions of opposition to the Forum that existed.  The event was sponsored by huge, multi-national companies with questionable reputations in the developing world, at least one of which had investments that could be traced to contractors who produce military arms.  Not only that, but entrance into the Forum cost 20 euros.  Protesters claimed it wasn’t a truly “universal” forum if there was a price to participate.  As the Forum was developed, Amnesty International, Greenpeace, and other NGOs eventually withdrew their participation in protest of how it was being planned. 

Despite the controversy (and I wasn’t privy to all of it until I returned to the States), I was still eager to volunteer.  I’d moved to Barcelona specifically to do so and I still wanted to experience the Forum to its fullest.  Quite honestly, the experience was amazing.  I was educated, inspired, and awed time and time again.  The exhibitions were fascinating.  Some were incredibly intriguing, and some simply brought me to tears.  Making my way through an interactive art installation that explored resources devoted to militaries and arms around the world (where I learned the amount spent on arms by the US alone is more than the entire worlds spends on education), I kept thinking to myself, people need to know this stuff!  Taking in street theater performances one afternoon, I would think, more people should get to see this!

(Image courtesy of barcelona2004.org)

Regardless of my personal experience, I can’t help but wonder, was the Forum successful in what it set out to do?  It had a $2.3 billion price tag – was it worth it?  The city and regional governments produced it largely to stimulate Barcelona’s tourism industry in the same way the 1992 Olympics had done.  It may have achieved some success in that regard: the Forum drew 3.5 million visitors, though they had originally projected 5 million.  But does that mean there were too many goals and not enough focus?  Were other visitors inspired the way I was?  What kind of ripple effects still last six or seven years later? 

Perhaps the Forum was bigger than it needed to be.  Someone had to front the $2.3 billion to produce it, so the presence of multi-national corporate sponsors is not surprising.(though sponsorship accounted for only 32% of funding for the event).  But did corporate interests drive the content and programming too much?  If they did, perhaps the organizers learned from their mistakes.  The Forum lives on, and if interest among the candidate cities that have pursued the opportunity to host  it in future  rounds is any indicator, its integrity has improved.  An organizing body, the Fundació Fòrum Universal de les Cultures, was founded as an independent foundation in July of '04 and is overseen by a board of trustees as well as the government bodies that founded the original Forum.  Its website lists no ties to the corporations mentioned above.  The foundation organized second and third forums in Monterrey, Mexico (2007), Valparaíso, Chile (2010) and is planning two more: in Naples, Italy (2013), and Amman, Jordan (2016).  The foundation also manages the Barcelona Center for the United Nations Global Compact and organizes a Peace Camp. 

So in fact, there are indeed lasting ripple effects.  Who knows how many.  But an event doesn't need to be as grandiose  as the Forum to make an impact.  Hundreds, if not thousands, of events are produced every year with similar ideals and like-minded goals.  More exploration of some of those to come on this blog soon.