A conversation hosted by Odile Hainaut and Claire Pijoulat, with Deborah Wang, DesignTO; Emilio Cabrero and Andrea Cesarman, Design Week Mexico; Olga Stella, Design Core Detroit.

What does it mean today to plan an international design event? How do we pivot from what we used to do to what we will need to do to bring the international design community together?

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What a wonderful way to kick off our WantedDesign Manhattan Online Conversation Series, with our partners and long-time friends from Toronto, Detroit and Mexico.

Here are some of the questions we asked our guests:

– What are the primary needs for your community and the challenge for your city?

– What emerges from this crisis as potential new scenarios for bringing the design community and industry together?

– How can design more than ever be a resource and a force for rebuilding, rethinking, reimagining our future?

– How will this situation impact the way we curate our events? Balancing local and international? Less but better? Less but better-targeted?

What came out of this conversation was that we all need to slow down and take the time to understand how to better serve our local community first. Before booking our next flight to an international design festival, what can we do in our own backyard?

As event organizers, we are all using this time to reflect, rethink and find new ways to support the designers and businesses we work with. We are envisioning some hybrid events, part physical, part virtual. We are adapting and listening to designers, manufacturers, journalists, and students trying to figure out the best ways to come out stronger from this crisis.

We are learning how to host these virtual events successfully and we were amazed to see 200 people join from all around the world, from Istanbul to Medellin, from Amsterdam to Vancouver, from Sao Paulo to Paris.

It is a big shift for us to host programs online. We miss celebrating the design festival in NYC and seeing everyone at WantedDesign. We would have opened WantedDesign Brooklyn 2020 tomorrow night, May 13, and celebrated our 10th anniversary. But we feel so grateful to see this great attendance today and all the sweet messages appearing in the Q&A box of our Zoom screens.

See a recap for the WantedDesign Manhattan Online Conversation Series, presented with Design Milk + Clever, at wanteddesignnyc.com/online

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About our guests…

Deborah Wang, Co-founder and Artistic Director, DesignTO
Based in Toronto, Deborah Wang (MFA, M.Arch) is a curator and designer with a background in art and architecture. She has worked with many galleries and cultural institutions, and in unconventional spaces, to present exhibitions and public programming, including in her role as Artistic Director of DesignTO: a non-profit arts organization she co-founded that produces Canada’s leading and largest annual design festival. 
designTO.org

Olga Stella, Executive Director, Design Core Detroit
Olga Stella has almost 20 years of experience in economic development, public policy and coalition-building in Detroit. Her career has spanned working alongside residents in Detroit neighborhoods to helping to facilitate over $200 million in investment in the city. Olga lives with her family in Detroit and is active in the community, serving on the boards of several nonprofit organizations. She is a graduate of the University of Michigan Ford School of Public Policy.
designcore.org

Emilio Cabrero and Andrea Cesarman, co-founders, Design Week Mexico
Emilio Cabrero and Andrea Cesarman are both architects and curators and co-founders of C Cúbica Arquitectos, Artelinea, Design Week México and Mexico Territorio Creativo. MXTC is currently in charge of three creative platforms in Mexico City: Design Week Mexico, Arch Days CDMX and Espacio CDMX. In 2018, they ran and curated the World Design Capital Mexico City program.
designweekmexico.com

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