Organizers of the BLINK festival say the footprint will be a little bit bigger this year. Executive Director Justin Brookhart says the light and art festival will grow to encompass new streets.
BLINK premiered in 2017, with shows stretching from Findlay Market to The Banks. In 2019, it expanded into Covington.
Brookhart says BLINK will still include Findlay Market and Over-the-Rhine, Downtown, The Banks, and Roebling Point, through downtown Covington. He says they're still trying to figure out how to include Mainstrasse.
“That’s kind of a large part about how we think about planning BLINK: Myself and the partners really think about BLINK as an opportunity to discover — discover neighborhoods, discover new streets, discover buildings maybe you’ve never looked at,” he says. “So, we’re always going to want to play around with our map a little bit. A little bit further west, a little bit further east, looping in some new neighborhoods.”
Brookhart says they have all the artists lined up for the official exhibits, and like the last two events, anyone can add to the spectacle.
“We can program the core event, but we really want to make sure that people understand that if you have an idea, if you have a building, if you have a venue, if you have a backyard where you want to throw a BLINK party, this is a weekend for you to get out and collaborate and think about art and light and what’s special about it for you,” he says.
BLINK will be Oct. 13-16.
Brookhart says there's a lot to plan for because the world has changed. “We’re really thinking about how do we create space for people knowing that people may want a little more room for each other when they’re standing side by side,” he says. “When we’re thinking about installation sites, we’re thinking about making sure they’re large scale enough to be viewed from a little bit further away, and thinking about how we establish key viewing areas where people can gather and view those.”
Brookhart says BLINK will have exhibits in Covington that can be viewed from the other side of the Ohio River.
After the 2019 festival, organizers said they hoped to expand to Newport. Brookhart says they’d still love to do that, but it won’t happen this time. He says they haven’t figured out how to maintain walkability between installations.
