We love it when hotels embrace their neighbourhoods. It’s a big thing for us, mainly because it means acknowledgment that guests visit a location as much as they visit a hotel, but it also shows us that they understand their context, surroundings and the local culture within. And boy does New York, personify culture.
Enter Liberatum, a global cultural organization, whose mission is “to present global audiences with remarkable programmes of the highest calibre featuring world renowned cultural icons as participants”. And that’s no small feat ladies and gents. So they teamed up with W Hotels NYC to present a summer series centred on New York and the power of transformation. This collaboration manifested as an exclusive panel discussion featuring iconic New Yorkers and industry leaders who explored how NYC has helped evolve and shape the worlds of fashion, music and design.
The aptly titled “Living New York” programme took place at the newly redesigned Living Room at W New York, Times Square. The panel featured fashion industry icon and supermodel Karen Elson, world renowned industrial designer and architect Karim Rashid, Academy Award winning filmmaker and screenwriter Paul Haggis, and leading fashion designer Prabal Gurung, all of whom discussed the impact New York has had on their lives, and how it has served as a catalyst in driving and evolving their careers and passions. The collaboration between W and Liberatum actually kicked off in June with #TAGGED, an exhibition at W New York documenting the transformation & evolution mobile phone photography has had on today’s culture.
W Hotels have a great eye for cultural movements and shifts through their dedicated manifesto of presenting what’s “New/ Next” in the market place. This teaming up proves incredibly powerful for the hotel brand and Liberatum, all set against the iconic and indelible New York City. The partnership affords a creative, honest and spirited reflection on the host City, whilst also allowing the audience to discover new and inspiring attributes of the Big Apple with W Hotel serving as the platform and Liberatum as the conduit.
Liberatum culturally have the knowledge and means to deliver first rate, world class and dramatic programming that gives guests and locals such a unique and much sought after experience. The calibre of names like Rashid and Haggis are enough to drive interest for the experiential brand junkies alone, thus creating seriously passionate advocates, retention and the all important brand chatter.
Now we don’t know about you, but we can’t wait to see how the rest of the summer turns out for W/ Libertaum’s collaboration, because much like Adam himself, that’s an apple, which has affected us all.
