After COVID postponements, cancellations, and downsizings, NYCxDESIGN is returning in full force this May. The tenth-anniversary edition of the festival, which runs from May 10 to 20, will flood New York’s five boroughs with design in all its forms. Expectations are high, with organizers predicting pre-COVID numbers in attendance and dollars. (For reference, the 2019 festival included over 400 events, saw more than 300,000 visitors, and generated $111 million of spending in New York City.)
The festival will serve as a test for the organization’s new direction. At the end of 2020, NYCxDESIGN transitioned from a city-led initiative to a nonprofit, and it has been working ever since to establish year-round programming to engage New York’s broad community of creatives. A handful of key programmatic themes will be highlighted in May—diversity and inclusion, sustainability and climate change, and resilience and equitable recovery, to name a few. Curated itineraries will enable attendees to parse these themes according to their personal interests.
Hundreds of events, exhibitions, activations, and creative partnerships are planned, including AN Interior’s own Design Showroom Cocktail Crawl that will take place throughout Manhattan’s Nomad and Flatiron districts on May 11.
