Strength in the City Festival Aims To Become ‘SXSW of Wellness’

Now in its eighth year staging events in cities across the U.S., the Chicago-founded fitness and wellness festival heads to New York City in May for a day of brand activations, classes and community events

If you need any further proof that people are craving more community and connection, look no further than the growing number of in-person fitness and wellness events attracting people by the thousands. 

These gatherings not only serve as a place for people to build relationships around like-minded enthusiasts, but also a key opportunity for brands big and small, international and local, to form bonds with potential members and consumers, especially for those who are just beginning on their health journeys.

That is a big motivating factor behind Strength in the City, its founder Liezyl Ribeiro tells Athletech News. She launched the event as an answer to the question: “How can I help my local community?”

Ribeiro is a native Chicagoan, and witnessing crime and civic unrest in her community, her gut instinct was to run for local politics to change things from the inside out. But Ribeiro pivoted, instead leveraging her event planning background to create a festival that promoted not only healthy habits, but local support.

“Why don’t we bring a wellness festival to Chicago that just brings the community together and highlights resources hyper-local to the community?” she told ATN. “It was really, truly to highlight the city. The name Strength in the City came from how we strengthen individuals to hopefully, internally, strengthen our city.”

Now in its eighth year staging events in multiple cities across the U.S., the festival is returning to New York City’s Bushwick neighborhood for a union of dozens of fitness and wellness activations, classes and community events on May 9.

Ribeiro has stayed true to her mission of focusing on local communities, with each festival highlighting local brands and resources that attendees can build long-term relationships with, while lowering the barrier to entry to wellness.

The event itself features a multi-stage format, with anywhere from 30 to 100 brand partners highlighting different modalities across fitness and wellness simultaneously, including strength training, cardio workouts, breathwork, yoga, soundbath meditations, community walks, and more.

The key to bringing in those local brands, Ribeiro argues, is so that not only can community members know where to turn for their fitness and wellness goals, but also so that Strength in the City can form ongoing partnerships to bolster those small businesses beyond the festival.

While the organization tours the country throughout the year — landing in cities such as Austin, Atlanta, San Diego, Charlotte, Detroit, Denver and more — it’s also maintaining close relationships with its partners (Ribeiro said there’s a database of 8-9,000 instructors and small businesses), helping them put on monthly events.

Ribeiro sees a future beyond just the festival and one-off events, though.

“I want to be the South by Southwest (SXSW) for wellness,” she said.

Ribeiro wants to build out the organization to provide a holistic education environment across fitness and wellness that supports local communities and businesses, “building it to be this overall empire of health and wellness, and really building it to be a resource,” she explained.

“We’re a small team,” she added. “We don’t have a big budget, but we do have a lot of passionate people donating their time to build a platform so that we have everything in one place.”

Tickets to the Brooklyn event start at $39, or free if you join the over 4,000 members already part of Strength in the City.

The festival kicks off with a free run/walk at 8:00am, followed by over 20 mini-classes in yoga, Pilates, HIIT, dance, meditation, equipment-based workouts and recovery experiences, as well as Bingo with 50+ prizes, local vendors and food.