SESSION SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

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 to draw urban thought leaders and change makers together to build better cities. Many TNOC Festival sessions are crowdsourced, and we accept session submissions from all over the world from many ways of knowing.

Click on a session type to view its guidelines:

SEED SESSIONS

What are Seed Sessions?
Seed sessions are workshops about ideas and actions of all kinds: we welcome sessions from science, practice, and art. They consist of mixed-discipline groups who gather to discuss, plan, propel, play, perform, learn, and act in some way to empower more resilient, sustainable, just, and livable cities. They are usually smaller in size to facilitate active participation.

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. The festival can provide AI-based text translation for a limited number of seed sessions. If you may be interested in this, select this option in the application form.

Session Length: 90 minutes
Festival Support: Curatorial assistance for session
Virtual Platform: Zoom (including breakouts), Miro, AI-based session summaries, AI text-based translation.
In-Person: Flexible types of spaces and rooms at Atelier Gardens, audiovisual set-up including projection, whiteboards, etc.

SKILLS SESSIONS

What are Skills Sessions?
Skills sessions teach, instruct, or present skills or ideas to workshop attendees. We welcome sessions from science, practice, and art. They can be any size, but should focus on teaching, making, learning, engaging and interacting. They can be focused on any kind of skill sharing including, science and research, scientific, culinary, illustration, communications, artistic, writing, community organizing, research, planning, design, health and well-being, meditation, 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. The festival can provide AI text-based translation for a limited number of seed sessions. If you may be interested in this, select this option in the application form.

Session Length: 90 minutes
Virtual Platform: Zoom (including breakouts), Miro, AI-based session summaries, AI text-based translation.
In-Person: Dedicated room at Atelier Gardens

ART SEED AND SKILLS SESSIONS

What are Art Seed and Skills sessions?
Art is for everyone. These seed and skills sessions integrate an artistic focus with a participatory and engaging format.

An art session could be a performance, a set of readings, a group drawing session, culinary, story-telling, play, music, dance, spoken word, talks on a body of work, discussion on building community-based art programs, skills on writing or comics, interviews or conversations between artists, scientists, and practitioners, an interactive exhibition, or any idea in art and practice.

Art seed and skills sessions can be focused in any geographic location, and you can propose them in any language. The festival can provide AI text translation for a limited number of sessions. If you may be interested in this, select this option in the application form.

Session Length: 90 minutes
Festival Support: Curatorial assistance for session
Virtual Platform: Zoom (including breakouts), Miro,AI-based session summaries, AI text-based translation.
In-Person: Flexible types of spaces and rooms at Atelier Gardens, audiovisual set-up including projection, whiteboards, etc.

SHOW-AND-TELL SUBMISSIONS

What are show-and-tell submissions?
Show-and-tell submissions bring multidisciplinary works actively engaged with building cities that are better for nature and all people together in the same room.

Show-and-tell is a place where you bring your work, ideas, and creativity to the festival grounds. A dedicated space in Atelier Gardens will host a collection of works submitted by scientists, artists, and practitioners from around the world.

Each submission accepted will be given a space within this space to exhibit. Work can be exhibited in many forms and could be a research poster, a science model or discovery, a product, a marketplace object, a food or culinary showcase, a design or artisanal work, an architectural model, an artwork, a live performance piece, or any other kind of expression that embodies your work.

This type of submission can only be included in the Berlin In-person event.

IMPORTANT: The costs associated with bringing, preparing, or building any item or idea to exhibit in Atelier Gardens are the responsibility of the applicant. TNOC Festival will endeavour to support all accepted submissions with curatorial support where needed.

Exhibition: Available in Berlin only. (Virtual presentations can use Microtalks.) Dedicated room at Atelier Gardens.
Festival Support: Curatorial assistance for exhibition
Time and date: 4, 5, or 6 June. To be communicated upon acceptance.
Submission Deadline: 26 January 2024. However, there are a limited number of spaces, so spots may be full before the deadline; best to submit your idea as soon as possible.

MICROTALKS

What are MicroTalks?
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.

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 pre-record your talk in any location you desire.

This year, nine prizes will be given for excellent MicroTalks. These MicroTalks will be integrated into our main stage plenary either virtually or in Berlin. If you are interested in being included in the prize draw, please indicate this in the application form.

MicroTalks can be focused in any geographic location, and you can propose them in any language. If you propose submitting a MicroTalk in another language other than English, consider captioning the video so many others may enjoy your content.

Video Length: 4 minutes (or less) recorded video
Platform: Published in the festival MicroTalk gallery and available on-demand.
Format: MP4. Ensure top video and audio quality.
Time and Date: Microtalk gallery is globally accessible online for the duration of the festival and several months after.
Submission Deadline: 26 January 2024.

VIRTUAL FIELD-TRIPS

What are Virtual Field-trips?
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. 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 on any live tour. Do not narrate the trip, but ambient sounds are fine. You will narrate and walk us through your recorded video during the session. The festival can provide AI text translation for a limited number of seed sessions.

If you are interested in this, select this option in the application form.

IMPORTANT: You will not need to submit your video to us. You can play the recording from your own computer.

Virtual Field-trip: 45 minutes
Video Length: up to 30 minutes, played from the presenter’s computer
Video Tools: Ensure top video and audio quality. Video will be played from the presenter’s computer.
Time and Date: Sessions run concurrently, based on time zone, scheduled by preference

IN PERSON (BERLIN) FIELD-TRIPS

What are Berlin Field-trips
Berlin Field-trips are proposed and led by local organizations that take in-person attendees on journeys to sites around the city to learn and explore the inspiring work happening in Berlin.
Field-trips highlight actions and approaches that are being taken locally in one of the greenest cities in Europe.

Field-trips can be visits to science projects, research institutes, gardens, farms, community organizations, arts and exhibitions, interesting architectural sites and infrastructure, urban and peri-urban natural areas, or any other idea that comes to mind.

Session length: Duration will vary depending on the activity
Dates: Field-trips will happen on either 3 or 7 June 2024
Festival Support: One Festival curator to support the experience

SHORT ARTIST & DOCUMENTARY FILMS

What are short artist & documentary films?

Curated by the Forum for Radical Imagination on Environmental Cultures (FRIEC),the art wing of The Nature of Cites, Short Artist & Documentary Films will offer unique, challenging, creative viewpoints that consider how humans and our cities are woven together with the rest of nature. Selected films have the opportunity to influence a diverse audience of urban decision makers, both virtually and in Berlin.

We welcome Artist Films in the form of short videos that relate to or describe your artistic practice including Music, Animation, Poetry, Spoken Word, Theater,Performance, Dance, Visual Arts, Community arts, or any other genre. We also welcome Documentary Films on any subject within the broad mission of The Nature of Cities, including but not limited to science, design, equity, planning, community, climate, resilience, food, art, and so on.

In principle, all accepted films will be screened both in the virtual and in-person sessions of TNOC Festival. However, the length of your film determines the context in which is is screened as follows:

Very Short Films (3–6 min) – An Artist or Documentary film, screened as an “Art Intervention” within the main keynote and panel discussion program at the conference. These films act like short happenings, and are curated to expand on(or challenge) topics within the conference.

Short Films (10–20 min) – An Artist or Documentary film, screened as part of the“TNOC Film Festival” with specific screening times woven into the main program.This category also offers the potential for a virtual session with the film’s director.
Note: Both complete films and excerpts of longer works are accepted, although excerpts must be able to stand alone as a work on their own.

Video Length: 3-6min or 10-20min
Video Format: a single MPEG or MOV video file (SD orHD resolution)
File size: less than 500MB
Festival Support: Curatorial support for submission
Submission Deadline: 26 January 2024. However, there are a limited number of spaces, so spots may be full before the deadline; best to submit your idea as soon as possible.

CALLS TO ACTION

What are Calls to Action?
Too often, international conferences bring global conversations to local places but struggle to share and give back to these places. TNOC Festival is a different kind of conference. To help both the global and local community, this submission category is our call to action to local organizations, institutions, small businesses, etc. to put our participants to work in supporting your local ideas and initiatives.

We invite local organizations from Berlin and nearby to submit direct actions that Festival participants can join. Actions may include but are not limited to helping to beautify space, producing a collective mural,assisting in building an installation, tending a garden or urban farm,planting trees, cleaning up a street, filling a food pantry, organizing a climate action or protest, creating a community nature-themed event, a community meal, or something more innovative that we haven’t thought of.

We’ll look for actions that are submitted in a genuine spirit to support something already happening on the ground. Selected actions will be listed as part of the Festival program and made available to registering participants to sign up for when registration is launched in January. TNOC Festival participants who sign up for your action will join you on that day.

Who would apply: Berlin organizations who want to conduct an action that could use help from TNOC Festival participants, and from which participants could learn.
Dates: One day, immediately before or after TNOC Festival.
Festival Support: Listing the action in the Festival program; available for selection by participants.
During the Festival: A opportunity for all such actions to meet together as a “seed session” to discuss the outcomes.

INSPIRATION

We invite you to be as creative and bold with your ideas as possible. Together, we can radically imagine cities that are better for nature and all people. Visit the TNOC Festival website for more inspiring examples of our boundary pushing programming.

BRING YOUR AWESOME WORK AND PASSIONS, AND JOIN US!

tnoc-festival.com
thenatureofcities.com

Many voices. Greener cities. Better cities.

CONTACT US

tnocadmin@tnoc-festival.com