Celebrating its 10th year, DesignTO has grown from a collection of 7 exhibitions and events to a 10-day Festival of over 100 free exhibitions and events throughout the city. DesignTO’s annual festival (formerly called the Toronto Design Offsite Festival) is an internationally recognized event. From 2011-2019, the Festival welcomed over half a million visitors and featured the work of nearly 4,000 artists and designers locally and from abroad. DesignTO supports and fosters Toronto’s creative community around design. 

“We’re overwhelmed by the community support which has allowed us to get to the 10th year.  From artists and designers to sponsors and partners, the Festival is very much a community effort.” – Jeremy Vandermeij, co-founder and Executive Director.

DesignTO will see the return of some amazing staples including the ‘DesignTO Launch Party’ to kick off the week, a half-day symposium on a future without work with a keynote by Carol Anne Hilton, CEO and Founder of The Indigenomics Institute; a multidisciplinary thematic exhibition ‘Future Retrospectives’ exploring how the past influences the future; a prototype exhibition ‘Work/Life’; several student exhibitions at OCAD University; the annual ‘Come Up To My Room’ take-over of the historic Gladstone Hotel; site-specific installations; and open studios.

New programming includes a dinner of local design, DesignTO Tours of a 235,000 square feet custom fabrication workshop, and a trip to Canada’s first suburb to talk about intensification through retail, plus DesignTO Talks with Toronto studios Anony and Castor, Mexico-based studio Anagrama interviewed by Monocle, and Berlin-based design and architecture collective They Feed Off Buildings who create terrazzo using debris from demolished buildings. The Globe and Mail and EQ3 celebrate Designing Canada: a new annual recognition of the best in Canadian design, author Randi Bergman talks to local makers featured in the recently released ‘Toronto Makes’ book, and the Toronto Society of Architects discuss the climate crisis at an Urban Affairs Forum. DesignTO also launches its first youth-focused program, with animations created by Oasis Skateboard Factory students.

Read more about DesignTO and see the full Festival Schedule at designto.org.

About DesignTO

Since its inception in 2011, DesignTO has seen over half a million visitors and welcomed 90,000 tourists, which has generated over $19 million in tourism revenue for the province of Ontario, its designers and business owners. Over the last nine years, the Festival has transformed the city of Toronto into a hub for creativity, taking art and design out of the studio and into the urban sphere featuring the work of nearly 4,000 artists and designers, and hosting over 650 exhibitions and events in many neighbourhoods and spaces. By bringing people together to celebrate contemporary culture, DesignTO provides opportunities for emerging talent and engages the community with exceptional and accessible public programming, in the middle of winter!