Creative Industry Kosice Urban Lab Traineeship 1
About the event
In February 2020, Creative Industry Kosice organised a week-long traineeship with 24 dynamic and highly motivated participants. The group represented a wide range of vocations such as; public administration, creative professionals and researchers, as well as other professions such as business and PR.
The methodology used during this traineeship was based on the combination of design thinking training and research (citizen science).
Participants started the session by selecting a core topic from several suggested urban challenges of the 21st century which included; environment, technology and inclusion.
The aim for the participants was to create common research-based service designs, to train their knowledge and co-create solutions. Working together in four groups, the teams initiated a creative process to elaborate on their ideas by researching with data, leading to ideation, visualisation, prototyping and texting.
Outcomes:
All the participants were encouraged to put the methodology into practice by using any of the activities learnt from the session in their own work environments. Although the benefits can be uncountable, for most people, the creation of synergies in interdisciplinary environments was evaluated as extremely beneficial.
The traineeship created a vibrant energy among the participants that successfully engaged a variety of people from many different backgrounds to work collaboratively and consider new perspectives.
Follow-up activities:
After the Covid measures that prevented the artists and cultural workers from continuing their work in Slovakia, the situation with the preparation of cultural strategy became a challenging tool to develop. Therefore, CIKE and its stakeholders decided to prototype a tool in the form of artistic residencies. This would enable support the cultural workers, artists or researchers with the commission of their work, whilst aiming to thematise the current situation and add inspiration to the cultural strategy on the note of working in isolation.
Even though this aspect of the project was conducted in solitude, opposite to the tendencies of the project, CIKE and its stakeholders wanted to grasp the concept of urban life in creative context and help with the ideation. Three projects were selected to help conceptualise three important topics of the Urban Lab:
- Public spaces and quality of life – Robert Rampaček wrote a pitch for an animation film that thematised movement in the city that is empty, by exploring the concept of walking.
- Multicultural understanding of Košice – discussing accessibility and inclusion, Designer Ľudmila Žoldáková brings together different cultural stereotypes of Košice in artistic interpretation. This is in connection to creative industries and the discussion of local fashion production, being one of the sources for city economy/in opposition to fast fashion.
- Public spaces and public participation – Juraj Horňák worked in Košice on the initiation of public interest in brownfields and the use of public spaces, his approach supports the demand for aesthetics of public spaces that were discussed in the workshops I-IV.
Explore the Home Residency image gallery here.
Although the artistic activities were inspiring, the Urban Lab in Košice required more data for more thorough strategic planning. Therefore, a local scale research was initiated to provide research on two topics:
- Strategic documents of the city and the context in which we are fitting with culture as a tool that might be a driving force and an initiative for new policy making.
- Audience research – focus groups and audience survey to find out their preferences – the survey was adapted to the telephonic one, in order to keep the Covid-19 safety measures