Ingenuity Festival Comes Home to the Ham as Expo: Ingenuity — and It’s Back to Three Days

Fri 9/23 @ 6PM-1AM

Sat 9/24 @1PM-1AM

Sun 9/25 @ 1-6PM

The Ingenuity Festival, which celebrates its 19th year this weekend, was founded in 2004 by James Levin and Thomas Mulready with idea that it wouldn’t have a fixed format or identity. The goal was to spawn new collaborations between the arts and technology and to activate abandoned and/or underutilized spaces in and around downtown, moving to different locations each year.

It moved from Public Square to a yet-to-be-booming East 4th Street, to Playhouse Square, to the beloved lower level of the Detroit-Superior Bridge to some un-atmospheric warehouses behind Browns Stadium where the festival nearly ran out of steam. Finally in 2016 it moved into a permanent space in a sprawling old industrial complex, the Hamilton Collaborative, where it could establish year-round workspaces (the so-called Ingenuity Labs) as well as hold the festival in its own dedicated space.

That move proved rejuvenating. Permanent workspace allows the creation of more intricate and large-scale projects and the complex offers a host of diverse indoor and outdoor spaces, which provide atmospheric backdrops for performances stages, vendor spaces, art exhibits, installations, interactive projects, bars and lounging areas, and more. It also developed spin-off projects such as its Ignite! Neighbor Nights and began collaborating on interactive arts-related projects with other events such as Brite Winter; in 2021, it joined with other organizations to bring its flavor to the first official Cleveland Juneteenth Festival.

It had a spectacular 2019 festival — and then the pandemic hit.

But Ingenuity was always founded on the idea of being flexible — and it adjusted. 2020’s fest was entirely virtual. In 2021, it moved to the lakefront where it had performers and small-scale installations throughout Gordon Park south of the Shoreway and filling the meadow adjacent to the marina at MLK Boulevard. It was one day instead of three; it was more family-oriented with more modest projects such as games and hands-on art activities.

Now it’s moved back to the Hamilton with a new name — Expo: Ingenuity — and it’s again three days. And once again, visitors can cruise through four floors of diverse performances on six stages and locations around the complex, installations, vendors, displays, speakers, and activities in areas such as the Ideation Station, Makers Mecca, Wellness Way, Inventor’s Emporium, Lunar Landing, and the Mechanique Boutique. In fact, there’s so much going on it’d be a good idea to go to their site and make a plan for the weekend of things you don’t want to miss.

Get a weekend pass for $10; kids 12 and under are free.

 

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