Fri 9/26@ 6PM-1AM
Sat 9/27 @ 1-10PM
Sun 9/28 @ 1-6PM
It’s been 20 years since James Levin and Thomas Mulready founded the Ingenuity Festival. It began near Public Square as a scrappy, creative effort to activate undeveloped spaces in and around downtown Cleveland with projects, performances and presentations that combined the arts and technology.
Those spaces have long since disappeared, subsumed in development, and Ingenuity has morphed into a creative monster with a year-round space of its own at the Hamilton Collaborative where it moved in 2016. That enabled it to develop projects on a scale it couldn’t when things had to be carted to location (as we learned when the festival temporarily took place outdoors in Gordon Park in 2021 following the pandemic).
With its continual growth and creative progress, this year’s IngenuityFest theme is appropriate: it’s “Forging the Future.” It’s expanded into even more space in the sprawling 100-year-old industrial building, so you won’t be able to experience everything even if you went all three days this weekend. They describe the events as a “Big Loud Dirty Messy Space for Exploration,” which is accurate.
So there are a couple of ways to approach it. You can check out its schedule online and make a plan in advance about which areas and performances you don’t want to miss. One caveat: you may get lost — or waylaid when something else captures your attention—and never make it to whatever you’ve checked off.
The other way, the one we recommend, is just to wander, and pause when something interests you. Don’t worry about what you’re missing—focus on what you’re seeing. Everyone’s IngenuityFest will be different.
What’s there? What isn’t? There are music, dance, theater, comedy and even drag performances on multiple stages, installations, immersive displays, artist and maker vendors, information booths from local creative and services organizations, a family village, demos of art and technology, many of which invite participation. In fact, being part of what’s going on is what sets Ingenuity apart from most festivals. At every turn, you’re invited to paint, make, build, swing, climb, walk through, share a story.
Get advance tickets here. Or get them at the gate.