The Future of Toronto’s Nuit blanche

This article outlines the stages that have led up to the current Nuit blanche visual art festival in Toronto struggling with its own success. I will begin by addressing the City’s whole-hearted acceptance of Richard Florida’s ‘creative class’ theory and its relationship with the festival. Toronto’s acceptance of the Floridian understanding of culture as an economic driver has made the Scotiabank Nuit blanche festival vulnerable to influences that have nothing to do with creative criticality. Pierre Bourdieu’s understanding of fields will be used to understand how these organizational changes make the festival vulnerable to unintended or even undesirable changes in the way the audience interacts with the artworks. Finally I will offer a possible strategy of how to shift the future direction of the festival using M. de Certeau’s writing ‘Walking in the city’ and Reynolds and Fitzpatrick’s further articulation of ‘transversality’1 to allow for more diversification in viewership and the artworks themselves.