Megan Cencula
To celebrate Music City’s flourishing design scene, a group of creatives have banded together to create a week-long series of programs.
Brought to the community by co-founders Lindsay DeCarlo, Julia Dyer, Fuller Hanan, and Kate O’Neil, Nashville Design Week serves as a platform to elevate design discourse. The city-wide events take place November 8 to 15, featuring exhibitions, talks, tours, workshops, and installations.
The co-creators come from a variety of backgrounds, including interior design, architecture, fashion, and nonprofit community design. A desire to make connections across different disciplines helped spur the idea.
“I moved here about two years ago from New York City, and I was immediately floored by how welcoming and inclusive and supportive the creative community in Nashville is,” says DeCarlo, Nashville Design Week’s director of marketing. “And I think, for me, it was really important that with such a strong community, and so many creative industries, we have a framework to support all of them and encourage the conversation between them.”
Nashville Design Week presents rare tours of artists’ studios, where attendees can see how designers work, firsthand. Interactive workshops, lectures on a variety of disciplines, and exhibitions that educate also top the list of events.
“The way that each day is structured is so that people who are living and working here in the city can make time to attend,” DeCarlo says. “We want this to be an event that someone could just pop into for an hour and learn something new or see something new.”
Although most Nashville Design Week events are free, participants must register online in advance for the experiences they wish to attend.
“Every single event that we vetted has some type of cross-disciplinary aspect to it,” says Dyer, Nashville Design Week’s director of strategy and operations. “You pick and choose what the week looks like for you just by visiting our website and registering for what you’re excited about.”
“I think one of the more unique events that we have going on is meditation at the James Turrell sculpture at Cheekwood,” says O’Neil, Nashville Design Week’s director of development. “It will be offered in the morning, so it’s just a really interesting way to start your day. The James Turrell sculpture is a gorgeous, very focused, intimate place to be for meditation.”
Another highlight is a conversation between esteemed architect Manuel Zeitlin and fashion designer Liz Pape of Elizabeth Suzann. The two powerhouses will compare disciplines, analyze processes, and talk shop.
“An event that I’m really excited about is from Katie Vance, the mastermind behind Porter Flea,” adds Hanan, Nashville Design Week’s director of programming. “She is bringing a design market together that will highlight and feature local craftsmen and really specifically the people that are contributing to interiors—everything from lighting and furniture to tile.”
Pantone and the Museum of Contemporary Art Nashville, which is still in the early stages of development, are collaborating on a multimedia show that explores the impact of new media art on contemporary art forms. The exhibition will be themed around Pantone’s color of the year, Ultra Violet; the ticketed event will raise money for the museum.
“We think Nashville’s creative communities are worth celebrating,” O’Neil says. “Nashville Design Week is a fun, celebratory event where people will absolutely be learning, but also encouraging each other to continue doing the great work that they’re doing.”