IDEAS CITY Festival Set for May 1–4

The New Museum and the Executive Committee of IDEAS CITY announced today that the second IDEAS CITY Festival will take place in downtown Manhattan from May 1-4, 2013. IDEAS CITY was founded in 2011 by the New Museum, New York, as an unprecedented collaborative initiative that involves hundreds of arts, education, and community organizations in an ongoing, multi-platform discussion on the future of cities around the globe. Guided by the belief that arts and culture are essential to the continued health and vitality of urban centers everywhere, IDEAS CITY partners work together to exchange ideas, propose solutions, share with the public, and effect change.

IDEAS CITY is a biennial Festival in New York City with additional annual Global Conferences organized in key urban centers around the world. IDEAS CITY: Istanbul took place in the fall of 2012 and IDEAS CITY: São Paulo will be held in fall 2013. These global events help to identify urgent issues and invite an ever-growing number of international thought leaders to participate in the initiative. This year, the overarching theme is Untapped Capital-under-recognized and underutilized resources and surpluses that can be harnessed as catalysts for change.

The IDEAS CITY Festival in New York begins on Wednesday May 1 with a Keynote address by Joi Ito,
Director of MIT Media Lab, followed by a daylong Conference on Thursday May 2, with mayors and visionary
leaders representing a range of disciplines. A series of participatory Workshops will take place on Friday May 3 followed by several evening events. On Saturday May 4, an innovative StreetFest along the Bowery features 125 local artists, architects, poets, technologists, historians, community activists, entrepreneurs, and ecologists who will share their ideas of Untapped Capital and will encourage the public to actively shape their city. Throughout the entire Festival (May 1-4), over one hundred independent projects, large-scale installations, murals, site-specific projections, exhibitions, and public programs, will be presented around downtown Manhattan, many of which will enliven unexpected areas of the neighborhood.

"As an institution dedicated to new art and new ideas, the New Museum strongly believes that the cultural community is essential to the vitality of the future city," said Lisa Phillips, Toby Devan Lewis Director, New Museum. "We also believe that the cultural sphere is still a relatively untapped source of enormously powerful creative capital, especially in its potential to stimulate economic development and foster greater innovation in other fields. The IDEAS CITY initiative is an unprecedented step in expanding both our institution's mission and its potential as a community hub, drawing the creative population together as agents for change."

Members of the Executive Committee for IDEAS CITY are the New Museum (founder); the Architectural League of New York; Bowery Poetry Club; Cooper Union; the Drawing Center; New York University Wagner School; and Storefront for Art and Architecture. Founding support for IDEAS CITY: New York is provided by a generous grant from Goldman Sachs Gives made at the recommendation of David B. Heller & Hermine Riegerl Heller. The Lead Sponsor of IDEAS CITY is Audi Urban Future Initiative, and the Lead Supporter is the Rockefeller Foundation.