World Design Weeks: Toronto Design Offsite Festival

The world is full of interesting design festivals, so let us introduce them to you. The first in line is Toronto Design Offsite Festival.

The world is full of interesting design festivals, so let us introduce them to you. The first in line is Toronto Design Offsite Festival.

Design festivals are being founded at an accelerating pace on all continents.

They have developed into local hubs of the creative fields that connect growth metropolises’ creative urban festivals and their partners, such as academies and companies representing the design industry.

And what’s great, now they are starting to work together even more as members of a new World Design Weeks network.

The objective of the network is to The objective of WDW is to promote collaboration in the design field, to support program  development and knowledge exchange, to amplify promotion and to develop the economic markets for creative fields. It provides networking and support to both the design field and the fields that utilize design.

Founding members include nine design festivals on three continents: Soul, Tokio, Beijing, Toronto, San Francisco, Mexico, Barcelona, Eindhoven and Helsinki.

As Helsinki Design Week is the first to chair the newtwork and hosts the first major event World Design Weeks Summit in September, we want to introduce the festivals to you. So let’s get started!

The first in line is Toronto Design Offsite Festival.

Helsinki Design Weekly presents the World Design Weeks festivals.

Toronto Design Offsite Festival

16 to 22 January 2016
Toronto, Canada
Over 100 events and 99 000 visitors

The Toronto Design Offsite Festival (TO DO) is Canada’s largest cultural celebration of design with over 100 exhibitions and events forming Toronto’s design week, January 16-22, 2017.

Going into its 7th year, TO DO transforms Toronto into a hub for creativity, taking design and art out of the studio and into the urban sphere, bringing people together to celebrate contemporary culture. They provide opportunities for emerging talent, and engage the community with exceptional and accessible public programming.

In January 2016, TO DO had direct participation from 400+ designers and artists, and 99,000+ visitors, and expects 58+ million press impressions and 66+ million brand impressions.

The programme consists of exhibitions, window installations, expert picks, festival features, and TO DO projects, including various fields from Interactive Design, Experience Design and Design Education to Fashion, Ceramics and Heritage.

The festival builds a thriving community through design, and for design, by collaborating with designers, artists, government partners, media, associations, and local businesses. The aim is to build a robust and agile platform for showing and talking about contemporary design.

Read more about Toronto Design Offsite Festival here.

The majority of TO DO’s exhibitions and events are free.

© ASHLEY AGAR

Toronto Design Offsite Festival
16 to 22 January 2017
www.todesignoffsite.com

World Design Weeks Summit will be held in Helsinki from 14 to 15 September 2017.
www.worlddesignweeks.org