Festival IDEAS CITY

New York City, 01/05/2013 – 04/05/2013

The 2013 iteration of IDEAS CITY, the biennial festival created to explore the future city and to effect change, will take place in downtown New York on May 1–4, 2013. Formerly known as the Festival of Ideas for the New City, IDEAS CITY was founded by the New Museum as a major collaboration between dozens of downtown arts, education, and community organizations to harness the power of the creative community and imagine our collective future. This ambitious initiative is built upon the core belief that arts and culture constitute a driving force behind the vitality of urban centers worldwide.

The inaugural festival was launched in May 2011. It included a three-day conference of symposia, lectures, and workshops with visionaries and leaders, including exemplary mayors, architects, artists, and technology experts; an innovative StreetFest along the Bowery featuring over 100 organizations and small businesses presenting model products and practices for a better city; and hundreds of independent projects and public events attracting over 70,000 participants. The overwhelmingly positive response led to the festival’s establishment as a unique biennial event in New York City with international satellite programs organized in intervening years.

The theme for IDEAS CITY 2013 is Untapped Capital. As the world’s resources continue to be endangered, depleted, and destroyed, we all need to imagine new solutions and develop innovative approaches and practices. Rather than focusing on deficits, IDEAS CITY 2013 will encourage intensive examination of surplus resources that may be under- recognized or underutilized: Untapped Capital. There are many ways of thinking about what might define “untapped capital,” ranging from people and raw materials, to ideas, networks, varied resources, and modes of communication. The topic of Untapped Capital provides a touchstone for alternative thinking about new methodologies, new solutions, and new goals.

For more information : www.newmuseum.org

Reposted from Ressource0.com

By Sacha Kagan

Research Associate at the ISCO - Institute of Sociology and Cultural Organization (ISKO - Institut für Soziologie und Kulturorganisation), Leuphana University Lueneburg, Sacha Kagan founded the International level of Cultura21, Network for Cultures of Sustainability, as well as the International Summer School of Arts and Sciences for Sustainability in Social Transformation (ASSiST). The focus of his research and cultural work lies in the trans-disciplinary field of arts and (un-)sustainability. Doctor in Philosophy (Leuphana University Lueneburg) with a thesis on the subject of culture, the arts and sustainability under the perspective of complexity ; M.A. in Cultural Economics (Erasmus University Rotterdam) ; and Graduate of Sciences Po Bordeaux (political sciences). For Cultura21, Sacha is also coordinating the eBooks series, the regular updates on our multi-lingual website, the English section of our webmagazine and the work of our Lueneburg-based interns.