FollowOn 1-2 Nov 2017 Creativity World Forum comes to the Danish shores for the first time. This is the largest event on creativity during Aarhus’ year as European Capital of Culture. The forum will combine academics, creatives and policy alike and integrate the academic session in a cornucopia of:
15+ high profile speakers
30+ creative breakout sessions
2000+ great minds
Globally, more people are city-dwellers than not. The move toward urban areas is only gathering speed: With Western countries leading the way, projections sway between 64 and 70 per cent of the world population that will live in cities by 2050. These are not just dry numbers: People are excited about city opportunities and choose the city as their place to live, work and play.
Aarhus is one of the oldest Danish cities, now labeled a city on the rise – building on cutting edge urban planning, new smart public spaces, and a growing ecosystem for creative citizen engagement and urban reflection. Cultural creative institutions, neighborhoods and incubators are shaping spaces for us to shape our lives. Yet our cities are dominated by industrial heritage, on the level of decision-making structures, build environment and public spaces as well as funding and spending priorities. This call asks how we can ensure that the changes currently being made to this “city heritage” enables the city of opportunities so much needed for us – and generations to come?
For example:
- Can regeneration through building development and real estate investment, new public infrastructures building a city of opportunities? If so, how?
- Or how about the everso popular incitement for creative participation through temporary project funding or ppp’s (private-public-partnerships)? Does that leverage opportunities for the future?
Creativity World Forum asks how to make urban creativity work and sustain: How to transform city heritage into a city of opportunities?
We highlight this against a backdrop where many cities are re-scoping towards a creative city, whilst dealing with inherited structures and population increase. The city heritage encompasses much of our world, in both digital and physical infrastructure, institutional configurations, public financing legacy, information flows and decision-making structures. That is not an easy balance.
The challenge is how to create a future of creative opportunities in our cities? What happens with the inherited structures? Do we regenerate? Or is it wiser to start afresh?
If you are researching in that direction, we would love to hear from you. We welcome all formats, innovative and traditional.
The Creativity World Forum Call for Papers, hosted by Aarhus University, invites academic contributions—critical reflections, case-studies, solutions and answers – to the question of how to use creativity to develop cities on the rise and address a changed global context for urban livability?
We invite abstracts of 100-500 words for long and short papers. You will need the following: focus and theme, description, keywords, and short biographical information
We welcome submission of abstracts until 20 March 2017 12 noon CET.