DROOG

PIONEERS OF CHANGE
Governor’s Island
Production

With over 25.000 visitors, Pioneers of Change, a festival of Dutch design, fashion and architecture on New York’s Governors Island as part of the NY400 celebrations, commemorating the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the Dutch to New York was well attended.

Repairing instead of recycling, knitting a carpet with six foot long needles using wool from three kinds of Dutch sheep, elderly people slowly but attentively serving meals with smaller portions of foods from far away places and larger portions of those from nearby gardens, Dutch fashion designers collaborating with Native American bead masters and local lace makers together with students from Parsons The New School for Design, designers digging in local grounds to reveal differences in color and texture, movies about urban farming focused on New York, and left-over building materials collected over a month in New York available for creative re-use.

Pioneers of Change, curated by Droog Design and orchestrated by the Dutch Consulate with Formavision, encourages a more responsible and sustainable approach to living. The event celebrates the blurring of low- and high-brow, establishing new collaborations, encouraging involvement and valuing handcraft and the local context.

Participants included 2012Architecten, Atelier NL, Maarten Baas, Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in New York, Franck Bragigand, Droog with Marije Vogelzang, Herman Verkerk, Rianne Makkink and Hansje van Halem, Experimental Jetset, Pascale Gatzen, Christien Meindertsma, MVRDV and The Why Factory with Work Architecture Company, Painted, Driessens & Verstappen, Arthur Elsenaar & Taconis Stolk, Parsons The New School for Design, Platform21 and Marcel Schmalgemeijer.