TNOC FESTIVAL

For outputs of TNOC Festival 2022, here

For outputs of TNOC Festival 2021, go here

For outputs of TNOC Summit 2019, go here

When is the next Festival? April 2024.

About TNOC Festival

TNOC Festival pushes boundaries to radically imagine our cities for the future. A virtual festival that spans 3 full days with programming across all regional time zones and is provided in multiple languages. A core philosophy of the festival is to foster inclusivity and lower barriers to participation. The festival focuses on facilitating transdisciplinary dialogue, small group workshops, arts engagement, and fostering a collaborative spirit around solutions for how to build cities that are better for nature and all people.

Check out our diverse partners here.

About The Nature of Cities

We are The Nature of Cities (TNOC), and the word “of” modifies Nature to mean the character of cities, which we view through a green and blue and community lens. We believe the route to cities that are better for both people and nature is through transdisciplinary dialogue and collaboration. The mission of The Nature of Cities is to curate joined conversations about urbanism across ways of knowing and modes of action. We create transdisciplinary, publicly available, and widely disseminated programs, events, knowledge, and engagements for green city making. We strive for cities worldwide that are resilient, sustainable, livable, and just.

About the TNOC Festival Logo

Our Festival logo was designed by Frida Larios. It conveys a sense of human connection among us as we steward nature and community in cities. The seeds depicted in the logo are shared ideas both dispersed and gathered. Hands are common in Mayan symbology and can mean both to throw or scatter and to receive. In many traditions, the open hand signifies greeting, welcome, and openness.

Sign Up for Our Newsletter

Festival registration will open in January 2022 for the TNOC Festival 2022. Sign up today to receive occasional news and updates about the festival directly to your email. Your email will be used for no other purpose than messages from TNOC about TNOC Festival.

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Breaking Down Siloes in Cities

The Nature of Cities Festival is an annual experiment in transdisciplinary collaboration to radically imagine cities that are better for nature and all people.

TNOC Festival Follows the Sun

TNOC Festival programming is designed across multiple regional time zones. This facilitates inclusivity and participation from around the world.

Sessions are scheduled to facilitate convenient daytime participation for everyone.

Many Voices
in Many Languages

Language is a common barrier to participation at international events. Most are only hosted in English. TNOC Festival strives to provide content in various major languages for greater inclusivity. English is the common language of the festival, but TNOC Festival facilitates and encourages crowdsourced sessions in various major languages. Plenaries will feature live translation in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Russian, and Arabic.

Radically Imaginative Programming

TNOC Festival programming is transdisciplinary and innovative. With multiple session types, the program is designed to push the boundaries of collaborative engagement by mixing the arts, sciences, urban practice fields, and performance to draw urban thought leaders and changemakers together to build better cities.

Can you propose a session? Yes, although the submission portal is now closed.

Session Types

SEED SESSIONS
Small interactive workshops that explore an idea, project, or direct action in cities.

SKILLS SESSIONS
Interactive workshops where you preset or teach festival attendees a new skill or idea.

DIALOGUES AND KEYNOTES
Short talks and transdisciplinary conversations. Keynotes from diverse geographies and points of view.

ONLINE FIELDTRIPS
Join a live-narrated video tour through various cities around the world. The next best thing to being there.

MICROTALKS
Short pre-recorded video talks submitted by you. A gallery of urban ideas from diverse thought leaders.

ART, STORY & PERFORMANCE
Attend a performance, listen to a reading, participate in collaborative art to build creative human-nature connections.

WORKING GROUPS
Create a meeting within a meeting where your team builds an idea hive, or cluster of seed sessions, within TNOC Festival.

Program Highlights from TNOC Festival 2022

TNOC FESTIVAL 2022 PROGRAM

PLENARY HIGHLIGHTS

ART AND DOCUMENTARIES

MICROTALKS

Partner with TNOC

FESTIVAL PATRON

SEED SPONSOR

DESIGN PARTNER

CONTENT COLAB

Check out our Partnership Package to learn more about collaborating with TNOC Festival!

VIEW PARTNERSHIP PACKAGE

Patron

Seed Sponsor

Content CoLab

Design Partner

Donating to the TNOC Festival

Thank you for considering a donation to TNOC festival. For this festival to be a success, attendance must be diverse and transdisciplinary in every sense, from south to north, and east to west. But often people, and especially practitioners, can struggle to pay for even modest registration fees. By donating to TNOC festival, you help support free entry for those who cannot pay and help us keep registration fees very low. We want to ensure that anyone who wants to attend the festival can do so. Thank you for generously supporting this effort.

A gift of any amount helps. We are grateful for your generosity.

Sincerely,
TNOC Festival team

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