Home /
Contact /
Press
News /
About /
Directions
NY400 Week / Holland on the Hudson presents Pioneers of Change, a festival of Dutch design, fashion and architecture on New York's Governors Island to celebrate 400 years of Dutch-American friendship.

Activities will take place in and around eleven officers' houses at Nolan Park, Governors Island, New York.

Open: Fri 10am - 4:30pm
Sat / Sun 10am - 6:30pm
Download Ferry schedule.

If visitors wish to stay on Governors Island past Pioneers' closing time, they can only attend the New Island Festival events and performances.
Repairing instead of recycling, knitting a carpet with six foot long needles using wool from three kinds of Dutch sheep, elderly people slowly but attentively serving meals with smaller portions of foods from far away places and larger portions of those from nearby gardens, Dutch fashion designers collaborating with Native American bead masters and local lace makers together with students from Parsons The New School for Design, designers digging in local grounds to reveal differences in color and texture, movies about urban farming focused on New York, and left-over building materials collected over a month in New York available for creative re-use.

Visitors can listen and debate, watch and participate, relax and think, eat and drink, play their music, be inspired, connect and, simply, enjoy. They can also shop at the pop up store of affordable Dutch design ware, all under 100 dollars.
Pioneers of Change encourages a more responsible and sustainable approach to living. The event celebrates the blurring of low- and high-brow, establishing new collaborations, encouraging involvement and valuing handcraft and the local context.

Since the economic downfall, the notion of luxury has come under attack. Pioneers of Change does not apply the luxury tag to an ethos of riches as such but to qualities now hard to come by, including space, fresh air, respect, care, silence, slowness and time.

The event will be kicked off on september 10th with open talks The topics 'Towards a New Notion of Luxury' and 'New Collaborations' will be discussed between Dutch an New York based designersand archtitects. (by invitation only!)
Pioneers of Change features leading designers and institutes from fashion, design and architecture, such as: 2012 Architecten, Atelier NL, Maarten Baas, Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in New York, Franck Bragigand, Droog with Marije Vogelzang, Herman Verkerk, Rianne Makkink and Hansje van Halem, Experimental Jetset, Pascale Gatzen, Christien Meindertsma, MVRDV and The Why Factory with Work Architecture Company, Painted, Driessens & Verstappen, Arthur Elsenaar & Taconis Stolk, Parsons The New School for Design, Platform21, Marcel Schmalgemeijer, Michael Schoner (NL Architects), Richard Hutten, Atelier van Lieshout, and Chris Kabel.

Governors Island, a free seven minute ferry ride from the Battery Maritime Building (10 South Street), located adjacent to the Staten Island Ferry in Lower Manhattan. More information and accurate ferry schedule here.
These names are the titles of the former officers' houses during Pioneers of Change. Click on each name for the specific program:

To download a map and program (pdf, 580 Kb), click here.
Staten Island /
Staten Eylandt
Pop up store:
100 dollars or less

Bowery /
Bouwerij
The luxury of
Silence and Care

Harlem /
Haarlem
Platform21 =
Repairing
Hempstead /
Heemstede
Knitting:
Christien Meindertsma

Bushwick /
Boswijck
Urban
Farming

Flushing /
Vlissingen
Harvest Map:
2012Architecten
Bloomingdale /
Bloemendaal
Go Slow / Droog, Sloom.org,
Vogelzang and van Halem

Gravesend /
's Gravesande
Drawn from Clay:
Atelier NL

Brooklyn /
Breukelen
Realtime:
Maarten Baas
Coney Island /
Conyne Eylandt
Painted / Parsons
The New School for Design

Rhode Island /
Roode Eylandt
Open Talks
Dutch Profiles

Greenwhich /
Greenwijck
Lawn:
Various objects