Call for proposals
Placemaking Week Europe 2019

Valencia, España  •  June 12- 15, 2019 

Read and submit your proposal here!

The European Placemaking Network, La Marina de València, the Placemaking Leadership Council, the Creative Bureaucracy Festival and STIPO are pleased to announce that Placemaking Week Europe 2019 will take place in Valencia June 12 – 15. Placemaking Week Europe will bring together activists, practitioners and city makers from all over Europe, to share the stories, projects, and innovations that make placemaking one of the most critical movements improving our cities today.

Placemaking is increasingly recognized as the cooperative process improving public spaces, buildings, streets and cities driven by dynamic communities of stakeholders. The co-creative spirit and collective ownership in the placemaking process results in more sustainable outcomes and lovable places for all. To increase the impact of the placemaking movement with Placemaking Week Europe we now aim to move beyond the ‘what’ to the ‘how’, and exchange successful strategies, tools, practices and lessons learned.

The City of Valencia will be an excellent hosting city for this year’s Placemaking Week Europe, as the city embraces placemaking in many ways. Best known for the recent transformation of the Turia river bed into a nine kilometer linear park, the city is historically rich in beautiful plazas, buzzing street life and lively markets.

La Marina de València will be the primary hub of Placemaking Week Europe. The harbor provides a context of one of the most innovative waterfront transformations happening today.

As most industrial harbors, historically separated from the city, La Marina is now reconnecting with the growing inner-city and becoming a place for Valencians to love and linger in their free time. In the past three years La Marina de València has experienced a remarkable shift in its public space strategy. From the previously implemented urban development through mega-projects, the harbor is now being given back to the city through placemaking efforts. Using a lighter, quicker, cheaper approach, its team is providing a successful harbor use, attracting economic activity and new businesses to the area, as well as additional activities including music festivals, skating, and a variety of sporting events. The recent changes are transforming the area into a buzzing innovation hub with co-working facilities, a fintech hub, a business school and much more. La Marina de València will be an inspiring and challenging location for placemakers joining Placemaking Week Europe, leading the way in waterfront regeneration and placemaking for innovation.

The European Placemaking Network, La Marina de València, the Placemaking Leadership Council, the Creative Bureaucracy Festival and STIPO invite placemakers to join an action-packed Placemaking Week Europe between June 12 – 15 2019. The week will be a festival celebrating the impact of placemaking, with inspiring keynote talks, interactive workshops, learning from and working on local and regional challenges, and most of all a great time connecting with fellow placemakers, with good music, local food and lots of sun and ocean fun. And we want you to contribute to making this the most successful edition of Placemaking Week Europe yet!

Main themes of Placemaking Week Europe

1. Placemaking for innovation: La Marina de València recently launched a living lab to experiment, design and reimagine inclusive and innovative public spaces through placemaking. Placemaking Week Europe will focus on the harbor area as an upcoming innovation hub, and further analyze questions around innovation for public good, by inviting thought leaders in the field, including topics like the future of work and social innovation. What does the future landscape of innovation look like? How can it contribute to improve our cities, public and third spaces for all? And how can placemaking contribute to a better connection between the innovation hub and the city fabric and urban life?
2. Creative Bureaucracy: The process of placemaking breaks disciplinary silos, and transforms the way we govern our cities today. To boost the impact of placemaking we need to talk about systemic change! We need creative bureaucrats, people working in public sector with the transformative ability to change the status quo and enable innovative processes like placemaking. Placemaking Week Europe focuses on creative bureaucracy, governance innovation and city-wide campaigns for a more place-led development of our cities. We invite pioneering civil servants and politicians – and those aspiring to become creative bureaucrats – to share their experience and lessons. How can local governments follow up to the rhythm of placemakers and be a sustainable partner? What is the role of policy makers and civil servants in the placemaking processes?
3. Open-source sharing from placemaking practice: The inherent value of placemaking as a process is that in each context it is adapted to the local community’s needs and its circumstances. However most placemakers find footing in tools, mechanisms and strategies developed by their peers in other contexts. Further, discrete themes and steps are inherently tied to specific contexts – what are these patterns, and how can we tap into this knowledge bank to boost our collective works?  Through open source sharing we build capacity and increase the impact of the placemaking movement. For Placemaking Week Europe we call upon placemakers to share their best practices, tools and innovative models for place management, place-led development and financing.
4. Future-proof cities through placemaking: To connect the impact of placemaking to the importance of improving our cities for future generations, Placemaking Week Europe concentrates on two important urban challenges in particular: climate change and inclusion. Through sharing practices, lessons and critical discussions we demonstrate and explore how placemaking is centered around shared benefits and public impact. Placemaking has a vital role to play in creating more inclusive cities for all, while lowering our carbon footprint and climate impact. How can placemaking contribute to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal 11: Make cities inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable

5. Waterfront cities: As many cities face the transformation of harbors and waterfronts from their initial industrial uses into a place for and by the people, Placemaking Week Europe is an excellent occasion to exchange best practices and challenges of waterfront regeneration. How to boost underutilized spaces, and make it into places people love? And how to attract economic activity and investment? Cities with access to water have a lot of added value for citizens’ lives, so it’s about time to tap into that potential.

Placemaking Week Europe as a festival

As Placemaking Week Europe will be a festival, we are open to proposals for tactical urbanism interventions, urban movies, sports activities, music performances, creative workshops, theatre performances, all related to the themes of Placemaking Week Europe.

Deadline and selection of proposals

Proposals should be submitted before February 25. 2019 12 PM (CET).

SUBMIT YOUR PROPOSAL HERE

The application is an online form with a series of questions regarding the session’s content, structure, audience and outcomes. You will not be able to save your application as you work on it, so to prepare in advance for the questions and word counts, you can review them first in the link above.

Want to send in your best placemaking tool or practice?

As an alternative to submitting a session proposal, we also invite you to submit a best placemaking tool or practice towards the content of Placemaking Week Europe. This may be a practice or tool of your own, or as a nomination on behalf of another in the field.

SUBMIT YOUR TOOL HERE

You will not be able to save your application as you work on it, so to prepare in advance for the questions and word counts, you can review them first in the link above.

GUIDELINES AND REQUIREMENTS FOR PROPOSALS

We invite placemakers across sectors and disciplines – working for government, real estate developers, business, civic organizations, knowledge institutions, citizens, activists and entrepreneurs – to send in proposals to contribute to Placemaking Week Europe and to be part of the growing European Placemaking Network. Applications are accepted in the following formats:

• Propose a talk (20-30 minutes). An inspirational talk about your project.  
• Propose a Panel/moderated session – 60 – 90 minutes. A format used to spark cross-disciplinary dialogue, and to dig deeply into panelists’ expertise.
• Propose a Workshop (On-site) – 60 – 120 minutes. These interactive workshops focus on building up practical skills and showcasing strategies and techniques.
• Propose a Workshop (Off-site) – 60+ minutes. Individual or team led, these hands-on learning modules generally take place in public spaces outside the main conference center, including walking / bicycle tours, and site-visits.
• Propose a Pecha Kucha Presentation – 7 minutes. A challenging and fun format for those willing to distill their knowledge into 20 slides, at 20 seconds per slide. One presenter per proposal.
• Propose a festival activity. No limitations – be creative!

Send in your tool and best placemaking practice. Besides actual presentation formats we are calling upon all placemakers to send us the best examples and tools from placemaking practice. The examples could consist of your own work, or you could highlight work of others that inspire you. Send us an abstract description of a tool or strategy, combined with a case study where it was implemented or tested, including its results. We will discuss how to share these stories in the most suitable formats, such as a publication, presentation, and whatnot. If your case is selected expect it to get an honorable role in Placemaking Week Europe and/or its follow up.

• You may submit multiple proposals.
• Strong preference will be given to interactive workshops, sessions that include diverse voices, more innovative formats over lecture-style presentations, and off-site workshops that use Valencia and its waterfront as a living laboratory.
• While space for indoor breakout sessions is limited, there is no upper limit on the number of off-site workshops that will be accepted.
• We are also open to a variety of formats for side events. For example, if you have an idea for a tour, networking event, or a day-long session or event, please email Charlot Schans at charlot.schans@stipo.nl to discuss options.
• The proposals for activities for Placemaking Week Europe are supposed to be self-funded. We do not allocate funds upon selecting proposals. However joint application for funds or other ways to look for support could be discussed.
• Once your proposal is selected you receive a link to buy your Placemaking Week ticket at a discounted fare of € 150,- (including one year membership of the European Placemaking Network, excl. booking fees).

We are looking forward to receiving your entries and to see you at Placemaking Week Europe 2019 in Valencia!

Charlot Schans, project leader of Placemaking Week Europe 2019, on behalf of all partners: The board of the European Placemaking Network: Laska Nenova, Vivian Doumpa, Fredrik Lindstål, Levente Polyak and Jeroen Laven, Placemaking Leadership Council: Ethan Kent, La Marina de València: Ramon Marradez & The Creative Bureaucracy Festival: Charles Landry.