GROW is back in 2018 (and still in Paris)

GROW is back for a second edition!
From November 12th to 16th 2018, GROW will showcase the many ways in which creativity can leverage code. Alongside world class artists, game designers and creative developers, we will host public and pro sessions, workshops, kid workshops, exhibitions, parties (of course) and a New Kids session dedicated to the young and emerging creative coding talents.
An event for the Pros…
We are proud and grateful for the many talented speakers that have accepted to join the event and talk about what they do best. As curation went, we wanted to cover as much ground as possible in the fields where code lifts creativity upwards: real-time rendering, WebGL, VR, generative design, media art, data-visualisation, AI and so on
Mario Klingemann, Anastasia Opara, Matt DesLauriers, Studio Joanie Lemercier, Marpi… Here are a few of GROW 2018 speakers. Thanks to them, to you and many others, the event is becoming the yearly meetup for the creative coding community. For this edition, GROW has an amazing program with 16 international speakers over 2 days, 4 two-day workshops hosted by Pyramyd formation along with 3 free-for-all days at the venue.
Now let’s be real, even in 2018, (creative) code is still perceived as a guy thing. Men are more visible than women on the digital creation scene to say the least. One of GROW’s aim for this edition is to address gender inequalities and promote diversity.
For 2018 speaker lineup, GROW has (almost) achieved a perfect balance of female/male speakers. Now, don’t get us wrong, the ladies are not here because they are ladies, they’re here because they kick ass in the fields of AI, generative and procedural design, new media art and creative coding.
GROW is about opening new possibilities in the digital creation fields; it is designed for the creative community: It aims at providing developers, graphic designers, creative directors, design studios and game designers with the opportunity to have an event that is tailored to their interests and needs. A time and place for them to learn, share, network, hone their skills, meet amazing people, and to well… grow.
An event for the young generations…
We also want to bring the next creative coding generation into light. For our first edition, In 2017, GROW’s team already had this in mind with the New Kids session. Making room for younger creative coders (students and juniors) is paramount to us. We believe that creative coding is not set in stone and the younger generation is likely to undermine our certainties, our ways of thinking or doing things. This is healthy, necessary and we value it.
This year, GROW partnered with the bilingual publication Back Office to design this challenge dedicated to students and younger devs. Challengers are asked to design an original creative code project based on a dataset of ancient postcards from the Saint-Brieuc (Brittany, France). By the end of October, 5 projects will be shortlisted and the selected teams will be offered the opportunity to show their project on stage, after the pro sessions of November 13th.

An event for the even younger!
We have also curated content for the very young! Thanks to our partner Magic Makers, we will host free workshops for kids aged 7 to 12. Debuting with Scratch, experimenting coding logics with Minecraft or coding for VR… From November 14th to 16th, kids will have the opportunity to express their creativity through code!

An event that’s free for all!
Yes, free as in “no money involved”. GROW will take place at Ground Control, a 4000 sqm former national railroad warehouse, turned into one of Paris main cultural and social venue. From Wednesday November 14th to Friday the 16th 2018, it will be transformed into a creative coding discovery platform.

As we designed GROW to be as inclusive as possible, we are also organizing free public sessions starting at 7pm every evening from Wednesday 14th to Friday 16th. Frederik Vanhoutte, Upian, Merci Michel, Back Office, Nicolas Barradeau… These sessions offer an intelligible approach on what code can bring to art and creativity, without all the jargon that can sometimes frighten newcomers or amateurs. And if you have kids, you can still bring them along and let the Magic Makers take care of them while you attend these sessions!

GROW schedule?
Temporary schedule:
PRIVATE // Nov. 12 & 13 @ Ground Control:
- pro sessions: with Mario Klingemann, Luba Elliott, David Lenaerts, Anastasia Opara, Saskia Freeke, Edan Kwan, Frau Zufall, Yi-Wen Lin, Cyril Diagne, Sabrina Verhage, Matt DesLauriers, Juliette Bibasse, Joanie Lemercier, Gaël Hugo, No Computer, Marpi, Tatiana Vilela Dos Santos, Jan Vantomme.
- New Kids challenge with Back Office journal
- shader showdown
Tickets on sale here: https://www.billetweb.fr/grow-paris-2018
PRIVATE // Nov 14 & 15 @ Pyramyd formation: pro workshops with Matt DesLauriers, Léon Denise, Grégoire Divaret-Chauveau and Gaël Hugo
Tickets are sold by Pyramyd formation. Waiting list: https://grow5.typeform.com/to/obdES3
PUBLIC // Nov 14, 15 & 16 @ Ground Control:
- kids workshops with Magic Makers
- public sessions with Nicolas Barradeau, L’atelier des chercheurs, Alexandre Brachet (Upian), Revue Back Office, Frederik Vanhoutte [EN], DataVeyes, Stéphane Allary, Merci Michel
- shader showdown
And what about GROW?
A bit of context:
Many successful events have gathered creative coding communities around the world for the past decade. Some events are still alive and kicking, others died, others evolved but very few take place in France as the French are known to hesitate a lot before taking action, blame it on our Cartesian skepticism?!?
There are some illustrious french predecessors though; the Web Flash festival and Processing Paris for instance. Both events were focused on a given platform backed by strong communities which was good yet couldn’t fully represent how diverse the creative coding community truly is; they were tied to a platform — be it open source — and therefore limited to its audience.
GROW is intentional about leaving these differences aside: it’s not about the tools, it’s about the practice and helping others discover and learn. It’s about showing, explaining, inspiring and empowering.
We were careful to keep a balance between the various fields of creative coding, not to be too “techy” nor too “arty”; other festivals and events are more specifics to one or the other and are therefore much better at either. GROW is focusing on becoming a haven of code-driven creativity.
GROW was dreamt of by Nicolas Barradeau and is produced by Spintank. The first edition was a blast with 150+ attendees at Le Tank in Bastille, Paris. We are very proud to introduce this new, much more ambitious edition where students, developers, hackers, artists, studios, creative directors and amateurs will meet for an unforgettable moment.
GRAB YOUR TICKETS HERE


