SPLAB: Strategies for Sustainable Creativity- a three day collaborative event in Malmö, Sweden, 6-8/5- 08.
We have been asked by the Municipality of Malmö (Sweden) to come up
with alternative policy suggestions for sustainable creative
development. Malmö is in a phase of transition from a depressed post-
industrial city to something else.

The city has a booming creative potential. It is has a large and
diverse immigrant population, many of whom have an academic
education, and it presently attracts young people from all over
Scandinavia. Its music, art and club scenes are famous, and the city
is generally perceived as 'cool'.

However, this creative potential has not yet been institutionalized.
The creative industries are underdeveloped, and although the new
university pursues a lot of initiatives, these have so far had
limited effect. The municipality has asked us to come up with
suggestions for how to better utilize this potential. However they
want to hear something different form the standard Florida narrative.
Instead of just emphasizing economic development and the creative
class', they want a more multidimensional approach: We are not only
asked to investigate economic potential of creativity but also its
political potential: the extent to which it can work as a foundation
of a re-vitalization of democratic processes, as well as its branding
potential: the extent to which it can underpin the branding of the
city. Also, we are interested in thinking about sustainable
approaches to creative development. While the Florida approach tends
to sweep away the very 'bohemian' creativity that it seeks to
valorize, we want to investigate approaches that can capitalize on
creative processes without destroying their foundation.

One of the ways we want to try to arrive at such suggestions is
through a three-day collaborative event. The event will take place in
an abandoned part of Malmö ex-shipyards during 6-8/5. During the
first two days we will invite creative actors from all across the
Malmö city-scape to work with politicians and representatives of
business to interact, communicate and identify problems and issues in
common. This will mainly take place in a number of workshops where
invited experts conduct discussions, experiments or interactive games
with the people present. The idea is to highlight different aspects
and introduce new thoughts in the process. On the 8/5 the process
will be terminated by a public event. We will have talks in the
morning and a number of parallel discussion sessions in the afternoon.

This is where we need your help. We would like to invite suggestions
for possible workshops to be held during the first two days, through
this open call. The selected paticipants will have their travel and
accommodation costs covered (for a maximum of two people per
workshop) and receive a one-off consultancy fee of 500.

The workshops aim at involving participants in practical activities,
with the purpose of reaching tangible results and goals. Any aspect
of sustainable creative development is of interest, from the use of
urban space, media infrastructures that allow for greater
participation, new funding and welfare systems, better mobilization
of city wide forms of collective intelligence etc.

In this respect, talks and debates will be just a medium in order to
support collaborative and participative activities.

Each day there will be three workshops and an evening lounge event.
One of the daily workshops could continue its activities and results
into the evening lounge event.

The workshops should be about three hours long and will involve a
mixed audience (5-20 people) of creative people, politicians,
business representatives, civil servants, academics and the public at
large.

Each workshop should have the following aims.
-the design of sustainable models for managing, supporting
and enhancing the city's creative resources;
-efficient team work;
-the active participation and collaboration among the
participants, encouraging social/cultural-integration
and cross-disciplinary projects;
-the achievement of precise goals, producing tangible
results.

The space is large and there are many possibilties, from interactive
installations via role playing games to traditional straight
seminars. If you have questions regarding practical possibilities
please discuss these with event-designer Eugenia Laghezza
(spontanlab@fenomenal.org).
Working languages will be English or Swedish.

source : nettime