The next TNOC Festival will be three weeks in 2024 in a series or connected events (a serial hybrid format)! The virtual section is 15-26 April. In person is in Berlin 3-7 June.

A virtual and in-person event that spans three weeks of interconnected events: nine days of virtual programming across two weeks (across time zones in multiple languages) and a four-day workshop-oriented in-person gathering in Berlin, Germany. 

A core philosophy of the festival is to foster inclusivity and lower barriers to participation. We focus on facilitating transdisciplinary dialogue, learning, small group workshops, direct arts engagement, and fostering a creative and collaborative spirit around solutions for cities that are better for nature and all people. 

“The distance between dreams and reality is action.”

The 2024 theme of “Action” focuses our attention on translating knowledge from various sources to results on the ground.

We push boundaries of transdisciplinary thought and placemaking to reimagine our cities for the future: science + practice + art.

TNOC Festival is a unique cities festival that is truly global and transdisciplinary where we explore between and through traditional boundaries to think, imagine and seed ideas for building cities that are better for nature and all people.

This is not a traditional “talk at you” conference. The Festival is experimental and hyper-interactive where the majority of our sessions are participatory in nature.

With two weeks of virtual and one week of in-person, we are trying to lower barriers to participation and lean into what virtual does best and what in-person does best.

The virtual section will have about 2,500 attendees across 10 days of programming. The in-person Berlin section will have 350-400 people.

We welcome new partners, including both financial and in-kind. Visit our sponsorship document here:  https://docsend.com/view/cg6kap3fzkujjw2s

We strive to be an event with lasting impact.

(1) we curate a growing network of collaborators — a community that continues to work together after each festival;
(2) we encourage participants to publish essays, roundtables, findings, and other outputs after the event at TNOC’s website, which reaches over 100,000 readers a month, from 75+ countries;
(3) new in 2024, we will publish a digital book of tools and insights on action, co-produced by the participants of the Festival, with editorial leadership from TNOC.

Of course! Both are equally important to the Festival spirit. The program will be unique to each.

The virtual and in-person sections share the same theme: action. For the most part, the programming in the two sections will be different in detail but related to the theme.

Yes. English is the common language of the festival, but sessions can be proposed in any language. Some plenary presentations will be in languages other than English. We try our best to support each language translation request for sessions. You’ll be notified of which translations are offered for sessions as we review session submissions in December. Plenaries will have presentations in several languages, with both AI-based translations into 20 languages, and live-translation into 4-5 languages.

Yes, by philosophy and design TNOC Festival welcomes all ways of knowing and modes of action, and our program emphasizes interaction and dialogue.

Yes! The virtual and in-person sections both have field trips. Field trips in the in-person section are the typical kind, including trips to green spaces, public art, gardens, and farms. Field trips in the virtual section are similar, but from around the world. They are videos of a walk with live narration by the trip leader during the session.

Yes, much of the event is crowd sourced. The platform for session submissions opens 20 September 2023. You can propose both seed session (workshops) and field trips (virtual and in-person). You can propose sessions for the virtual section, the in-person section, or both. For seed sessions, we will prioritize proposals that are interactive and participatory.

We welcome proposals in all subject areas: science, art, practice.

Seed sessions are conversation-focused workshops about ideas and
actions of all kinds. They consist of mixed-discipline groups who
gather to discuss more resilient, sustainable, just, and livable cities.
They are usually smaller in size to facilitate active participation.

Seed Sessions can start with short scene-setting talks—perhaps
several examples of a focused idea—followed by facilitated
discussion towards an output designed by the session organizers.
Seed sessions are not intended to be panels of speaker presentations
but interactive working sessions where groups think, imagine, create,
and/or act. Think about what the output of such a session could be, so
the session’s discussants can work toward that conclusion.

Seed sessions can be focused in any geographic location, and you
can propose them in any language.

We welcome proposals in all subject areas: science, art, practice.

Length: 90 minutes.

Skills sessions teach, instruct, or present skills or ideas to
workshop attendees. They can be any size, but should focus on
making learning engaging and interactive. They can be focused
on any kind of skill sharing: scientific, food-related,
communications, artistic, research, planning, design, etc.
Skills Sessions can start with short scene-setting talks, or involve
guest presenters and panel discussions. They can include
discussion and interaction among participants. You can even
encourage your group to gather around a joint output after the
festival.

Skills sessions can be focused in any geographic location, and
you can propose them in any language.

We welcome proposals in all subject areas: science, art, practice.

Length: 90 minutes.

Virtual Field-trips are pre-recorded video tours with ambient
sound, but narrated live by you during your session. They take
each festival goer on a journey through a part of your city you
want to share with the world. Field-trip themes and content ideas
can include but are not limited to; nature in cities, cultural or
historical centers, arts and design, rural-urban connections, etc.

To record a field-trip, plan your route in advance to prepare for
filming. On the day you film, walk the route exactly as you would
in any live tour. Capture in video the things that are interesting to
see and illuminate what you want to talk about. Do not narrate the
trip, but ambient sounds are fine. You will narrate and walk us
through your recorded video during the session.

We welcome proposals in all subject areas: science, art, practice.

Field trips during the in-person Berlin section of the Festival will be the typical kind: a live walk with conversation.

Length: up to 60 minutes.

MicroTalks are everyone’s opportunity to share their work, ideas, and
passions with everyone else at the festival. What do you do? What
are you passionate about? Do you have an interesting idea or action
to share? MicroTalks are available on-demand throughout the
Festival. See MicroTalks from Festival 2022 here: https://tnoc-festival.com/wp/microtalks/

A MicroTalk is a brief talk or presentation of 4 minutes (or less)
captured on video. A MicroTalk addresses a project, subject, point,
or idea about cities. You use your best audio and video tools to prerecord
your talk in any location you desire. Quiet outdoor locations
often help make up great lighting and provide attractive scenery
drawing people to your talk.

MicroTalks can be focused in any geographic location, and you can
propose them in any language. Transcripts for MicroTalks must be
submitted alongside video talks to allow for translation captions.

We welcome proposals in all subject areas: science, art, practice.

Art and art engagement is embedded throughout TNOC Festival. There will be many artists at the Festival, along with scientists and practitioners. There will be a call to submit art ideas.

Art, story, and performance sessions are everyone’s opportunity
to get involved with the arts. Propose sessions that integrate an
artistic focus with a participatory and engaging format.

An art session could be a set of dialogues, short scene-setting
talks on a body of work, interviews or conversations between
artists, an interactive exhibition, a narrated pre-recorded
performance (music, dance, spoken word, etc.) with group
discussion, or any idea in art and practice.

Art, story, and performance sessions can be focused in any
geographic location, and you can propose them in any language.
Translation for sessions is not provided by TNOC, but you are
welcome to provide interpreters with your session if you need it.

TNOC Festival strives to foster inclusivity and lower barriers to participation for all attendees around the world. The festival offers multiple affordable registration categories to achieve this. We accept requests for free entry, but we ask each attendee to please pay something to attend the festival as this helps us cover real costs of putting the event together. We continue to raise money to push registration costs downwards.

Despite our international reach, The Nature of Cities is a small not-for-profit charity that doesn’t have the financial capacity to pay festival speakers. We really value your time and and we appreciate your generous contribution to the Festival. The Nature of Cities is a Commons. All of our content and programming is free and open and doesn’t sit behind a paywall. The Festival helps us support that important mission year round.

Paying for Festival registration helps the Nature of Cities keep all the programming and content in our organization free and open source for everyone to benefit from. We have curated an online magazine with over 1200 contributors from around the world and resisted integrating advertising and pay per view or membership-based content. We believe that knowledge is a Commons. There should be as few barriers as possible to accessing it so that we can achieve the kinds of just, equitable, sustainable, and resilient cities we dream about. Paying for festival registration helps us continue to create and produce in a common space.

Registration will open for TNOC Festival 2024 on 1 January 2024. Join the festival newsletter for festival news and updates, including registration announcements.

The agenda for the three-week Festival will be available in early-January 2024.

No, previous events were TNOC Festivals in 2021 and 2022 (entirely virtual) and our in-person TNOC Summit in 2019 was in Paris.

The list of key partners is continually growing. Visit our homepage to check our our sponsors and partners. We welcome the City of Berlin as a key sponsor and partner.

A wide variety of elected officials (former, current, and future) have contributed to TNOC. It is early in the TNOC festival planning process, but we expect various elected and city officials as guests.

For the virtual section of the Festival, we expect approximately 2,500-3,000 participants from around the world, from many ways of knowing and modes of action. For the in-person section we expect 350-400, also with international participation.

Yes, we will publish a list of relevant hotels early in 2024.

The Nature of Cities® is a 501(c)3 Public Charity (as recognized by the U.S. Department of the Treasury), a nonprofit corporation registered in the State of New York. The Nature of Cities® is a registered trademark. TNOC Europe is a registered Charity in Ireland.

Visit us at thenatureofcities.com .

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 lens. 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.