Photo courtesy of PINC Experience.

For two years, PINC Experience was relegated to a dusty storage container in the garage. The annual event that celebrates design, innovation, people, creativity and changemaking through engaging speakers from around the world succumbed to the same pressures of the pandemic as every venue in the region. But starting yesterday, the event that bills itself as a day of transformation reawakened as something bigger, more accessible and, literally, more historic.

PINCfest is the new incarnation, a three-day sprint of events and programming that includes live music, food trucks, a kaleidoscope of visual arts and an open-air long-table dinner where the festival’s most notable changemakers will gather for an evening of conversation over epicurean delights. “It was really difficult watching PINC Experience not just sit on the back burner, but be labeled ‘impossible to exist,’” says Anand Pallegar of DreamLarge, the organization responsible for PINC. “But after a second year of this pandemic we felt like it was time to act, it’s time to move and do something ambitious that scares us.”

The “scary” part Pallegar refers to is the enormity of the undertaking. The event includes nearly 30 musical acts, nine food trucks and seven muralists, not to mention all the planning and curating that took place for a Ringling College student art show and a series of projection mappings from local artists. “In a perfect world, we had always wondered what PINC would look like if it was more than a night at the Opera House,” says Pallegar of previous events which were limited by the number of seats at the Sarasota Opera House.

Holding the event outside in the Rosemary District and making it free and open to the public opens the gates for a greater community-building flair, says Pallegar. And that’s a piece of the PINC puzzle that also ties in with another one of DreamLarge’s initiatives: RADD. “We were very careful and purposeful in the muralists we invited to come paint at the event,” says Pallegar, “because as we continue to reimagine the Rosemary District, it’s important to honor the past while creating for the present.”

But more than just beautifying the Rosemary District in the mold of Wynwood Walls in Miami, the event also stands to dramatically change the look and feel of the neighborhood for years to come. “This might be the biggest single visual art event in the history of the city in terms of impact,” says Pallegar. “It usually takes years to change a neighborhood on this scale, but we’re going to try and do it in three days.” In some ways, the event promises to act like a shot of adrenaline, a huge rush of energy and people and creativity akin to Burning Man—but less of a Mad-Max-on-acid vibe and more of a creative-on-coffee vibe.

And despite all the effort to put the event together, Pallegar, the consummate seeker, is coming to it with the open mind characteristic of the event itself. “Doing things on this scale is incredibly difficult, but the idea was always to make PINC something bigger,” he says, “so I’m really intrigued to see what this can turn into.”

Today’s programming includes another day of live mural work around the Rosemary District, live music and projection mapping 5-10 p.m., and the PINCfest Ideas Dinner 6-10 p.m. (tickets required). The event culminates tomorrow with more murals, the Ringling College student showcase 4-7 p.m., and a food truck rally beginning at 4 p.m. to go along with more live music and projection mapping.

Photo courtesy of PINC Experience.

For more information click here