After more than a decade at the Hyatt Regency hotel, the North by Northeast music and arts festival (NXNE) is
moving its festival headquarters to MaRS.
NXNE announced the partnership last week, as well as the fact that
Pitchfork Media would be taking part in the festival in 2015. The partnership will see the MaRS complex, located at 101 College St, host several of NXNE's most important functions, including its delegate registration, keynote address and all of its interactive panels.
The decision to leave the Hyatt Regency comes after NXNE saw its 2014 interactive panels draw greater crowds and a more varied and accomplished list of speakers.
"Last year we realized that we needed a space that better reflected the level of talent we were bringing in," says Christopher Roberts, NXNE's festival director. "We wanted something that made more of a statement, and something that reflected the mandate of what our conference wanted to do and achieve. Looking through that lens at Toronto's landscape, there really were no other options: MaRS was the perfect marriage of our mandate and what we wanted the conference to be."
As for how the change of locale will affect the festival, Roberts says he hopes attendees feel a new energy when they visit the complex in June.
"I think because its venue where there’s already a culture of people trying to create, rethink and retool ideas, that that energy will permeate to the rest of the conference. You will see a band playing in one corner and someone will be discussing their startup in another. That’s the energy and buzz I want to create, and I think that MaRS already has a great ecosystem to help foster that kind of environment."
NXNE 2015 takes place June 17 through 21.
Source: Christopher Roberts