“Design Week changed to Design Camp,” says Shawn, “because it was an actively engaged week by locals where design was treated as a verb rather than just a concept.” And it’s stayed that way. Now in its sixth iteration, Design Camp still invites designers from further afield to take part, but Baltimore’s increasingly influential scene forms the backbone of the five-day programming. It has more than enough to present from its own shores, and that’s a testament to the strength of the city’s creative landscape.

A port city, around a three-hour drive from New York and an hour from Washington, Baltimore has birthed many an influential artist. This industrial metropolis is where Tupac spent his formative years and attended the local art school; it’s a place with its own subculture and genre of house music, Baltimore Club; and in the early days of American jazz, it was a vital East Coast hub nurturing careers from Billie Holiday to Eubie Blake. To call the arts scene here fledgling would be a disservice to its history, but it certainly has a renewed energy.

Music is, once again, at the forefront of it all. Two of the biggest names in punk rock and alternative rap, Turnstile and JPEGMAFIA, are from Baltimore, but so are critically acclaimed contemporary artists like Derrick Adams, while Amy Sherald, the first African American artist to paint an official First Lady portrait, attended the city’s art school. The city’s fashion scene is also newly strengthened as local skate label Carpet Company, a renowned name in American streetwear, opened its first store in April 2026, taking over an abandoned bank and turning it into their own playground decorated with a silver pyramid plonked in the middle, a big peeing dog figurine above the cash desk, and bright red pipes circling above.

“There’s so much potential here and there are so many cool people who are doing things,” Ayman and Osama Abdeldayem, the brothers behind Carpet Company, told me earlier this year. “It’s just not a major city. When we wanted to plant our seed, we had to do it here in Baltimore instead of going to New York or LA because those places already get so much shine.” As well as not being a major city, it’s also a historically deprived city, where it’s estimated almost 20% of citizens live below the poverty line, but Shawn hopes his annual Design Camp—where events are free to attend and open to the public—can make design more accessible to the community while giving that much-needed shine to homegrown talent.

“Creatives here have a unique eye and focus on their craft, and usually for the right reasons—not for commercial success or notoriety, but for true passion.”

“Creatives here have a unique eye and focus on their craft, and usually for the right reasons—not for commercial success or notoriety, but for true passion,” says Shawn. “Consequently, this work influences the world because it feels genuine and is from a deeper place and meaning,” says Shawn. He’s in the middle of organizing the bill for the next Design Camp, titled Baltimore to the World, when we speak, and already has the Abdeldayem brothers as confirmed speakers. He also has Indian textile artist Shradha Kochhar alongside Black food journalist and farm-to-garment brand owner Stephen Satterfield hosting a day exploring the indigenous origins of textiles, food, and the worlds in-between.

Fellow brand owner Michael Haskins, an artist who runs a gallery in Baltimore, is also taking part in this year’s Design Camp while local spaces like Perfect Memory Radio, a volunteer-run community station exploring Black music and culture, and the community hub Library19, opened in 2025 in an abandoned library building, are hosting events. And the scheduling goes far beyond just panel talks and exhibitions.

“We do morning hikes, yoga, meditation, and music listening sessions to get our day started right, work on our design projects together in the middle of the day, and then be inspired and in the community with talks and workshops in the evening,” says Shawn. “Most importantly, it is a week not just geared to the ‘designer,’ because we all live among design and engage daily within art, architecture, fashion, film, music, and more.”

“It is a week not just geared to the ‘designer,’ because we all live among design and engage daily within art, architecture, fashion, film, music, and more.” 

The full breadth of the city’s scene is made clear when we ask Shawn what the best galleries and design spaces in town are. The man over-delivered, and ever the humble proprietor, didn’t even plug his own space, good neighbor—a brand, a craft-focused design store, an intimate guesthouse, a coffee shop, and an exhibition space all rolled into one. There is just so much else to spotlight in this city.