"Why," a staff member of the City of Santa Fe's Economic Development division was said to have asked after last year's Design Week event, "is Zane attacking Design Week?"
It was true, I'd been critical, but then, the central event had been beyond lackluster. For some unknown reason-perhaps the same invisible ether that makes people think civil liberties are disposable or that it's OK to drive slow in the fast lane-it's an uphill battle to convince people that criticism is not synonymous with assault. The point of criticism isn't to tear something down, but to enable and encourage a dialogue that leads to constructive progress. Criticism is a kind of cheerleading that not everyone is comfortable with, but if you can get over taking it personally, it really is more useful than saying, "Terrific event-couldn't be improved on!" or, "Baby, you look great in that dress."
This year, Design Week was a different beast, a much more successful beast. The Economic Development division, the Arts Commission, the Convention and Visitors Bureau and the event producer, Grace Communications, worked well enough together to launch
Design Week into a whole new stratosphere of relevance. Not only did panel discussions and presentations by visitors introduce a raft of new ideas to the Santa Fe community, but discussions and demonstrations among locals clicked on bright new lights of understanding in curiously contentious areas like high-density, mixed-use development, gray water reuse and getting building codes to work, you know, with us, instead of against us. Launching furniture design and architectural competitions was a much-needed component of the event and a good beginning. The Green Design Expo was packed with intriguing products and genuine entrepreneurism-enough to make one think the quasi-mythical Rio Grande Tech Corridor just might be real and that the city's economic development goal of being a national leader in the development of "green" technologies ain't so far-fetched.
Hosting a UNESCO Creative Cities Summit (Santa Fe is the only US city in the world-wide program) in tandem with Design Week, and with the intention of hammering out the details of an upcoming major international conference, was a fantastic move on the part of the city; sharing wisdom and plotting hijinks with officials from Egypt, Argentina, Colombia, Canada and Italy is pretty cool, after all. In all honesty, I can't wait for next year's Design Week: This is a serious and keystone event for Santa Fe's future. That said, there are still miles of improvement needed in the basic building blocks before a natural annual evolution takes its course. Remember, it's not "attacking," it's more like what your daddy used to call "tough love."
Next year, I plan to clean my slate for the week, so I can sink my teeth into all the events. But I only realized how necessary this is when virtually every program I wanted to attend was running behind schedule. I kept carving an hour or two out of my day and rushing to a lecture of particular interest only to find it starting late. It's fine if you're wandering the streets, but If you happen to have other things to do, it's vexing. I don't know if someone needs to design a big frickin' clock or what, but it'd be nice to see some improvements in the schedule.
A ton of effort was clearly poured into making El Museo Cultural a decent venue, but not enough. The Railyard-facing entrance, covered in well-designed banners, was a good start, but it was all downhill from there. Entrants in the furniture design contest had their beautiful objects staked out in a nasty little room with bad sheetrock, dubious lighting and no style whatsoever. A colored paper attempt to make the expo hall look enticing was begging for dried macaroni to be glued on alongside some pilgrim cut-outs-not quite up to par. And why on earth would people have to sit on cold aluminum bleachers to watch key panel discussions happen among participants in cheap, crappy office chairs? I'll bet there are a ton of local designers/artists/artisans-whatever-willing to create ingenious seating for the crowds and high-end furniture manufacturers willing to compete for the honor of providing well-designed seating for panel discussion participants. Many of the local talents are the same people who couldn't afford a booth at the expo but would have made it look a lot better if they'd just been given one. It's certainly wise to create the event as something people want to pay to participate in, but there should be a process to apply for a free year's exhibition for companies like VIDA design and Santa Fe Modern Home, who are using local craftspeople to build original, contemporary, local designs.
I'm going to avoid too deep a discussion of the generic porta-potties set just outside the back door with their potent
eau de
-as one friend called it-"porta-punch." Why not composting toilets to go with the green theme? And why not a huge, interactive exhibition and prominently placed model of the new civic center-i.e., the reason Design Week was taking place in such a compromised venue in the first place-so that we could all appreciate the situation and look forward to next year?
Finally, businesses and organizations of all kinds are always thinking they can put their Web site on the back burner, but it's just not true anymore. For an event like Design Week, the Web site is going to end up seeing more visits than the actual event. There's no excuse for not putting in the extra time/money/whatever to have the design directory complete and the forums/idea exchange area complete. People are not impressed by the "coming soon" tag.
All in all, the week is still weak on the visual end of the spectrum, but content-wise, the event is a freaking gorilla and probably the very best elective use of city funds currently going. Design Week 2006, as one exhibitor told me, was a "watershed moment." We'll be able to look back and see how our future shape began to take form right then and there.
