Chinatown Arts Festival is Here!

This October, Chinatown Arts Festival returns for its eighth year! It’s a whole month of celebrating culture, creativity, and community. From Cantonese opera to a mooncake afternoon tea, to puppets and soundbaths... this year’s festival is packed with exciting programs for all ages. Think!Chinatown is showcasing both traditional Chinese cultural arts groups and emerging Asian American artists through visual art, music, dance, food culture, and storytelling in the neighborhood.

Check out our open calls for musicians, visual artists, and storytellers for festival participation.

Led by festival curators Yin Kong and Amy Chin, the Festival features programs produced by Think!Chinatown while highlighting cultural events hosted by other Chinatown organizations. By presenting grassroots Chinatown artists and emerging Asian American artists in context and dialogue with each other, we can bring multiple generations together and connect with a wider arts audience. The festival also highlights cultural happenings presented by our neighbors to increase awareness of Chinatown’s cultural assets. Check out videos from previous years!

Think!Chinatown’s Events

Chinatown Arts Festival: Celebrating the cultural richness of Manhattan’s Chinatown since 2018

Neighborhood Calendar

Events in and around Chinatown this October!

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Think!Chinatown is a place-based intergenerational non-profit in Manhattan’s Chinatown, working at the intersection of storytelling, arts, neighborhood engagement, and creative placekeeping. We believe the process of listening, reflecting and celebrating develops the community cohesion and trust necessary to work on larger neighborhood issues. By building strength from within our neighborhood, we can shape better policies and programs that define our public spaces, celebrate our cultural heritage and innovate how our collective memories are represented. T!C is the team powering the Chinatown Night Market, Chinatown Block Parties, Chinatown Arts Festival, and more.

Chinatown Arts Festival is held on the unceded land of the Lenape peoples. This festival is supported by public funds from the New York City Dept of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council. The Festival is further supported, in part, by a Challenge America grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Promotion for the Festival is funded in part by a grant from the New York City Tourism Foundation. 

Think!Chinatown programs are made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, the Mellon Foundation, and the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation's Cultural Sustainability: Community Roots program. Additional funding is provided by  many individual friends.