C7 Unheard voices and unseen places, Stockholm 17-23 August 2019

 

Gathering in Stockholm, prepared though digital meetings and conversations with our Informar Eduator Avril Mehaan, was to be an IRL learning summary of the initial bilateral activities conducted very intensivley during the entire spring 2019. We found ourselves thinking about the impact we, as organisation working on a european and international level, can have on the society and environment surrounding us.How can interlocal culture organisations working with international collaboration build communities engaged in society and reclaim spaces?

The C7 activity in Stockholm was destined in helping us find answers on this issue for us to evolve as individuals, organisation and network by discussing methods and meeting swedish changemakers as well as putting a framework for the social innovationlabs.

After looking at each and everyone of the partner’s changemaker, we found a common ground: community building. The interest in changing and acting on our surrounding was a red thread for our changemaking strategy, thinking about it as a part of the sector we work from, it can very much be understood as a disruptive innovation. 

Therefore the week in Stockholm was focused on understanding more the different changemaking methods that we understand as disruptive innovation for the cultural sector. We also discussed how collaboration on an international level could benefit us as local actors acting on different society. 

We started with presentations of changemakers which were carefully chosen by each organisation, even if some of us were still not clear on the detailed usufullness of the methodlogies. A challenging process of informal learning with own organisation in focus just started. 

Expected outcomes of the meeting in Stockholm 

summarise the c-activities

discuss changemaking methods

discuss the role of organisation building communities in a european context

reflecting on the self-learned experiences 

thinking of dissemination ideas for the social innovationlabs and the final reports (IO3)

 

Here comes a frame for a description of the changemaker strategy which each organistion has to deliver

● why you have chosen that type of new approach?

● why you chose that specific actor?

● how you would like to interact with him?

● how would you like he&you interact with the social contest?

● witch cultural patrimony you chose and why it needs a positive change?

● how it's related to the urban waterfront?

Description of the scenario defined with the changemaker :

● how the chosen professional actor will organize his work?

● how it will engage the social groups as citizens associations?

● how it will engage the local stakeholder(s) owning the cultural patrimony?

● how it will include the waterfront context and orient it to a cultural development?

● how it will generate a participatory and inclusive process?

● how it will develop sustainably after the end of the financed period by I_improve?

 

A summary of the changemaking methodologies chosen by each partner:

City of Ostend: utilising the idea of 'value proposition’, a business model process, to create a project for public institution with a social/culture core

Venti di Cultura: games as a tool to manage conflict orientation in stakeholder communication; also the idea of ‘reclaiming’ citizen space from a conservative authority

River//Cities: uncovering, drawing out and ‘showing’ the stories of marginalised and underrepresented groups in society through the body, performance and the spaces they are in. 

Intercult: How to achieve activism within, as opposed to in conflict against, the system 

Laimikis: achieving citizen-oriented sustainability in spaces of rapid transformation and liberal values; mediation and reclamation 

Wiener Spö: inverting a commonly practised community building approach by beginning with a task around which ‘agonistic spaces’ can emerge and cultural pluralism can be experienced