BLINK is over, but organizers say its future could be bigger and better

CINCINNATI — Less than 24 hours after the lights and effects were shut off, signaling the end of BLINK, organizers are already looking to what’s next.

“Wanted to thank the city for showing up for it. We worked really hard to condense a two-year planning cycle in 11 months,” said Andrew Salzbrun, co-founder of BLINK.

While the festival may have just ended, it's never a minute too soon to discuss the future.

"(We) talked to Mayor Pureval over the weekend," Salzbrun said. "We see this event, which is four days currently, has the opportunity to continuously change the trajectory of this city by making it a major milestone in people’s programming calendar."

Salzbrun couldn’t answer whether BLINK would be back in 2024.

"My thought and my heart is that it will be back. We have a lot of analysis to do, but absolutely, we’d love to bring it back," he said. "But it’s expensive. It’s a lot of hard work. We want to make sure that it’s appropriate, and has justification for bringing it back as well. It’s something we hold to a high regard. We respect the time and commitment the community has given to it. We want to sit on that for a while and breathe a bit."

For an event with its roots in inspiration and its branches in creativity, Salzbrun said the focus moving forward is on the experience.

"There can be a bigger table with more people that have seats at it," he said. "I’d love to get this from a four-day event with a long warm-up to a month — to an opportunity where we can invite industry and creative leaders, thought leaders on the global scale, into our community to envision and dream what the future City of Cincinnati can look like."

Justin Brookhart, BLINK executive director, said he feels the event has become synonymous with the city.

"BLINK is a part of the brand of Cincinnati. Now, this is something that Cincinnati is known for," Brookhart said. "We've seen that a lot with some of the folks that have traveled in this weekend, I spoke to people from LA, New York, Chicago, Pittsburgh, so many places and they were telling me that like they love that Cincinnati is a place that not only celebrates public art but does it in such a positive way."

While official attendance numbers haven’t been recorded yet, Brookhart said he believed it was a successful four-day event.

"Well we felt like it was a huge success and attendance, you know, was definitely looks like it's trending up since 2019, so thrilled overall by how many people turn out to experience the weekend," said Brookhart.

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