Curious what it’s like to host an event during Austin Design Week?
Whether you want to share a fresh perspective, build your public speaking skills, or connect with designers across different disciplines, hosting an event is your chance to be creative and engage Austin designers, community members and visitors in an event led by you!
To give you more insight into what it’s like to host an event with ADW, here’s what some of our past hosts had to say about their experience.
Leslie Barrientos, Personal growth
“The best part about hosting an event is you get to collaborate with friends, you get to inspire people, and you get to see your idea go from just being a proposal to actually coming to fruition. That’s always super exciting and really inspirational because it makes you believe that you can do it, and it’s really great for your personal growth.”
Jared Culp, Different perspectives
“What I love about our event is the speakers sit amongst the audience and you can kinda talk to them freely, and really get to hear different perspectives. Everyone, whether you’re an introvert or an extrovert, will feel the freedom to speak up if you have something to say.
Austin Design Week is important as a whole because you have an influx of all these different artists and food and information — all these things that Austin’s known to celebrate — happening at one time. If you look at the list, there’s way too much for anyone to do but there’s definitely something that speaks to what you’re interested in. You definitely have an opportunity to make your own design week.”
Emily Eisenhart, Open studio
“I love Austin Design Week. I straddle the design and art worlds, so for me it’s really fun to open my studio and be able to talk about my brand and design work and then also my fine art practice and have people explore the overlap with me.
I have aspiring artists coming to talk to me and wanting to get into design and I have designers coming to me like, how do I build a career in design? It’s really fun to have conversations with them about what’s trending, what’s fresh and where they want their career to go because I can learn from that as well.”
Aric Cheston, Recruiting
“A lot of our team has been in the design community in Austin for a long time, so it’s a great opportunity for us to open our doors, bring people in and get to know folks. We’re also recruiting, so this is a great opportunity for us to get the word out about that.”
Victoria O’Dell, Community
“What I get out of Austin Design Week is community. Seeing that there are other people that care, not just about the work that they’re doing, but sharing that work with other people, making it more accessible, making themselves more accessible, and making spaces where other people feel invited and allowed. I think that’s the most important part about ADW — just inviting people in and opening up to the community so they can picture themselves in these spaces is important.”
Robynne Trifiletti, Shared visions
"I think Austin Design Week is important for so many reasons. First of all, there are so many amazing creative opportunities in the city of Austin and yet every single discipline or group sort of stays siloed. This is an opportunity for all of the groups to open up so there’s an opportunity to learn about one another, to share in each other’s visions and creativity and learn that you aren’t the only creative designer in the world here in Austin.
There are so many other groups and teams who are like minded but maybe doing different things and have different goals around design. It’s really cool to be able to connect the communities for one whole week.”
Ready to host an event? Submit your proposal here.
The call for proposals will close on Monday, June 28th at 11:59pm CT.