ADC Creative Festival 2022: Giving birth to ideas

1 March 2022

This year’s gathering is being held under the rubric “Ideas create reality” with the aim of boosting the will for more – and more radical – creativity

Ideas arise in the head. But even when the neurons in our brain are firing on all cylinders, the best idea is useless if it goes unimplemented. It must be born. This is the image being pursued by this year’s Campaign for the ADC Festival (17 to 20 May), devised by the youthful agency Belly Studios. The Key Visuals range from a pink brain to a series of colourful idea ovaries. With this reference to the female reproductive organs, the focus on women initiated last year by ADC President Dörte Spengler-Ahrens is re-emphasised – and supplemented this year with the theme of Diversity. Oriini Kaipara, a journalist from New Zealand and a diversity ambassador, is one of the international speakers to be announced for the ADC Congress (19 May) at the warmup on 22 February.

ADC Festival to be held in hybrid format

Personalities from academia, business, communications and technology will gather at the ADC Congress under this year’s ADC slogan “Ideas create reality”. Among the confirmed attendants are Lucas Crigler, Creative Director SS+K New York and member of the board of Diversity and Inclusion for Ad Age; Katharina Wolff, publisher of the Strive business magazine for women and former member of the Hamburg parliament; the artist and activist Laetitia Ky and the rapper Bounty & Cocoa.

The event is moving this year from the Kampnagel performing arts venue to the Hamburger Bucht event location in HafenCity. The switch is partly down to the pandemic situation. “The ADC Festival will be a colourful mix of physical and digital components,” ADC Managing Director Klaus Gräff explains. Nevertheless, he is not expecting the same number of guests to show up in person as in pre-pandemic years.

Warmup in Hamburg’s Mutabor design agency

Courage is a precondition for creativity

The years of the pandemic led to a rethink not only in organizing events, Dörte Spengler-Ahrens says. “We have learned to take the possibility of failure into account.” Constantly changing conditions – failing one day and succeeding the next – increasingly became normal. “That has given us no option any longer to be discouraged. And courage is the precondition for creativity.”

Outstanding creativity will once again be rewarded this year during the ADC Competition and the ADC Talent Awards, and also in awarding the ADC Pins. The four-day Festival will celebrate creativity and incentivize new and daring ideas – in line with its slogan 'Ideas create reality’. Spengler-Ahrens: “An idea sometimes has to be radical and unthinkable in the truest sense of the word in order give birth to genuine progress in communication, business and society.”
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Sources and further information

adc.de/festival

Art Directors Club for Germany

More than 750 leading brains in creative communication have joined forces in the Art Directors Club for Germany. Among the club members are well known designers, journalists, architects, scenographers, photographers, illustrators, directors, composers, producers, specialists in digital media and advertisers. The ADC regards itself as a benchmark for creative excellence and rewards outstanding communication. It organizes competitions, congresses, seminars, lectures, events and B2B events, and also produces a range of publications.