For its 13th edition the DMY Berlin International Design Festival will be staged in a new venue and under the auspices of a new organiser.
Neither change coming particularly voluntarily.
The former festival organiser DMY Berlin GmbH & Co. KG filled for insolvency in October 2014, and the process was formally opened on January 1st 2015.
Given the nature of their business DMY Berlin GmbH was, though committed to the cause, never the most profitable of companies, and ever increasing financial pressure combined with a cut in the subsidy paid by the Berlin regional government for the various international showcases of Berlin design talent organised by DMY Berlin GmbH, ultimately meant that those responsible saw no long-term viability in the operation and thus no option but to file for insolvency.
The rights to the DMY Berlin name and brand have now been taken on by Berlin based agency about:design a.k.a Annett Böhme and Enric Nitzsche, two individuals who both worked in and for the previous organisation team and as such have experience of the event, and perhaps most importantly, the peculiarities of running such an event in a city such as Berlin.
We certainly wish them well and hope they receive the support an event such as DMY Berlin deserves.
Associated with the enforced personal changes, 2015 will also see DMY Berlin leave Tempelhof Airport for the Kraftwerk Berlin event space; a location which features just as much post-industrial charm as Tempelhof - albeit without the expansive airfield on which to wile away a sunny June afternoon.
Organised under the title "Back to the Future" DMY Berlin 2015 promises, in addition to those familiar features that make DMY such an exciting and relevant event, new features including the so-called DMY Lab. If the central exhibition will be accompanied by a broader Berlin Design Week festival is currently unclear. But it is certainly to be hoped that it is.
Similarly open is the future of the DMY Design Gallery, an institution which filled a patently obvious hole in Berlin's oh-so creative landscape, and the German National Design Award - the Designpreis der Bundesrepublik Deutschland - which for the past three years has been run by DMY Berlin GmbH & Co. KG on behalf of the German Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy.
We'll keep you updated with more details as and when we get them.
Full details of DMY Berlin 2015, including how to apply, can be found at the festival's new website, http://dmy2015.com
