Championing creativity in all its forms

Jacob Urup Nielsen explains how a British Council project has investigated the different ways in which cities can tap into their creative side

‘Reverse graffiti’ by Moose in Aarhus, Denmark.

Over the past four years the British Council’s Creative Cities project has reached 250,000 people directly in 15 countries across Europe. One of its main aims has been to harness the creativity which exists in cities everywhere to the greater good of the city as a whole.

The most salient expression of creativity is public art and cultural events in our cityscapes such as sculptures, street art, festivals and street performance. A second, but no less important way to work with creativity is by giving opportunity to people from all walks for life to use their creative and innovative skills to rethink the place they live and thereby make it better.

This second definition is sometimes also called social innovation. Where former definition has a distinct aesthetic quality to it – and could be termed as a narrow creativity focused around expression of culture – the latter is a more comprehensive, broad creativity in the sense that it embraces both creative and innovative solutions in local communities as well as policies.

Creative Cities has been centered around three project strands: Future City Game, Urban Ideas Bakery and Creativity in the City. The first two explore and deliver on the broader sense of creativity whereas the last element gives the opportunity to explore narrow creativity in cities.

In terms of the latter we have supported a series of events where artists and other creatives have worked with local people in co-creating beautiful works of art but have also challenged the way cities look.

An example of this is the Guerilla Gardening event staged with Richard Reynolds in Budapest where the use of ordinary gardening practices suddenly take on new meaning when done in unusual contexts in the cityscape. This type of event helps to challenge conventions and open a debate around the use of public space. Similarly in Aarhus, Denmark reverse graffiti pioneer, Moose, worked with local artists in creating art in algae covered walls by cleaning off the algae in pre-cut stencils thereby creating beauty where the city has usually been neglected and looks ugly.

Turning now to the broader creativity, we have worked with two formats to generate ideas and implement solutions in Europeans cities, Future City Game and Urban Ideas Bakery.

Future City Game is a process which allows the 25 players to generate ideas based on their perception of global and local challenges in the city where they play. The game differs from many workshops or public hearing in giving the players and opportunity to test their final idea over almost one whole day both with the general public but also other local stake holders such as local business and local politicians.

A team makes its presentation during the Future City Game in Oslo, Norway.

The thorough test phase both gives a sense of whether ideas will actually be able work in real life, for example civil engineers can tell players whether the soil in a given public space will actually be able to support proposed buildings, and a lawyer can advise whether changes to policies are actually possible within the law. By talking to stakeholders the teams also find possible owners of their ideas who might be the beneficiaries but who also may be able to support the idea.

The game has been played more than 150 times across Europe and has generated a plethora of ideas, up to 50 per game, of which many have turned into real activities, bricks and mortar or policy changes in their home cities. In Kaunas, Latvia, one idea was for the mayor to be present for one hour on the first Tuesday every month at a local café to give citizens more opportunity for dialogue around developments in the city, in Nottingham the game resulted in the idea of a Core Cities card which would give youngster a discount on public transport in each of the eight core cities.

In addition to the cornucopia of ideas, Future City Game is in a smaller way also a way of giving people new skills, for example in presentation skills, budgeting and in teamwork. In the final evaluation of the Creative Cities project more than 80% of the respondents felt they had improved their skills in teamworking, communication skills and their understanding of participatory approaches to planning.

Both Future City Game and Urban Ideas Bakery generally gave local stakeholders access to networks with other individuals and organisations which they were not in touch with prior to the event. Urban Ideas Bakery worked more with solutions, asking participants to look at short term, medium term and long-term solutions for the issues in the location of the bakery. Most challenging was then to implement the short-term solution before the event was over. The events brought together experts from the UK and other countries.

The feedback we have had from participants has been positive and all three strands of the project were seen as starting points for the development of international relationships and collaboration.One main conclusions is that it may be difficult to assess a project like this after three years as some of the ideas which have been planted will take time to fully flourish.

Another key point is neatly summed up by Dutch city expert, Roy van Dalm: ‘It is one of the gems of the whole Creative Cities programme that the British Council has always stressed the need for social innovation, whereas the discussion about creative cities in The Netherlands get stuck in focusing on the creative industries as a sector of the industry to be backed and promoted.’

And in case you are in doubt, creativity in all shapes and forms is immensely important to cities. It allows us to constantly look for solutions which make our cities better places to live work and play in. As Phil Wood of Comedia says of creativity: ‘It’s a way of looking again at your city, at its problems and weaknesses, maybe the very things that we think are weaknesses are potential strengths.’

• Jacob Urup Nielsen works for British Council in Denmark in the field of creative and knowledge economy.