Berlin Case Study - Cities Institute

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3.2 Design Mai (May Design Fair) www.designmai.de The Design Festival is organised by a local society which is coordinated by seven voluntary members. The first festival was held in 2003. The initiative started out as a magazine – now 130 open studios (cf. London Case Study – East End/Hidden Art ‘Open Studios’) participate over a 2 week period in May each year. Some locations provide a venue for several design presentations, whilst a Showroom offers a retail opportunity to purchase direct from designers/ creators. The central festival venue is the Forum in Berlin-Mitte, with an auditorium for workshops, lectures and presentations. Berlin Partners sponsor an annual Design Prize with the aim of raising the profile of the sector and better connect designers. Future fairs will be held over a shorter period, from 10 down to 4 days over 2 weekends – it currently ‘peters out’ after the first few days and media coverage. Design Mai is an international as well as a Berlin event, German design schools/students exhibit at international exhibitions, e.g. Milan Fair, and a ‘Young & German’ award of €100,000 links Berlin and Tokyo sponsors and designers. This award is supported by the Federal Cultural Foundation. A symposium “Brave New Worlds” is run in cooperation with the Einstein Forum, Potsdam and funded by the Federal government’s Capital Cultural Fund. In 2005 over 12,000 tickets were sold, the Design Mai web site receives 6 million ‘hits’. Success is also measured in terms of free media coverage in Germany and in the international press. The 2006 Fair features international speakers, including designers from the UK. Despite its high profile and growing popularity the Design Mai is a low cost event, and little in direct sponsorship outside of awards such as Nike’s ‘Design Room’ prizes of €5000/€3000/€2000 for first, second and third place. 50,000 copies of the festival magazine and programme are produced for €12,000 (excluding sponsorship in kind), but it is printed in Koln/Cologne not Berlin. This designer-led initiative is not directly associated with higher education and training institutions – the Potsdam Design School operate a start-up system, providing low-cost studio space and marketing management advice. There is also little non-ethnic German creative sector engagement (although the ArtBerlin magazine is owned by a Turkish-German businessman), or with poorer, migrant districts of the city, Industrial Design in Berlin is a strength (e.g. Bauhaus tradition), but there is not a ‘community of design’ or cross-design collaboration. For instance, Berlin’s designated Design Centre is not well-connected to practitioner design/ers, according to Design Mai. Architecture and cultural heritage Shrinking cities www.shrinkingcities.com This is a project funded by the Federal Cultural Foundation between 2000–5, under the direction of Philipp Oswalt (Berlin) in co-operation with the Leipzig Gallery of Contemporary Art, the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation and the Berlin-based magazine, archplus. Shrinking Cities, is a three-year initiative project of Germany’s Federal Cultural Foundation, which seeks to expand Germany’s city-planning debate – until now concentrated on questions of demolishing surplus apartments and improving residential quarters – to address new questions and perspectives. The project also places developments in eastern Germany in an international context, involving various artistic, design, and research disciplines in the search for strategies for action. The emphases of the research and exhibition project, Shrinking Cities, are, first, an international study of processes of shrinking (first project phase) and, second, the development of strategies for action for eastern Germany (second project phase). The results of the first project phase (the international study) has been be documented in a catalogue and an exhibition, which was shown in September 2004 at the KW – Institute For Contemporary Art in Berlin. The results of the second phase of work were presented in an exhibition in 2005 in Leipzig. It is intended to show the exhibition in additional international sites in 2006 in Europe and North America. 36 Berlin Case Study/appendix A
More than 10,000 visitors have seen the exhibitions in Halle and Leipzig, Germany The exhibition at the Centre for Contemporary Culture in Halle had 5,264 visitors between November 19 2005 and January 29 2006. The second exhibition of Shrinking Cities – Interventions, at the Gallery for Contemporary Art Leipzig, drew 4,900 visitors. More than 2,000 visitors attended the 66 events of the accompanying programme, which included discussions, city tours, workshops, club evenings, and a children’s and a film programme. Some items from the exhibition in the ZfzK will remain in Halle: the Municipal Museum of the city of Halle on the Saale has acquired a number of the exhibition contributions for its permanent collection. The exhibitions in Leipzig and Halle were the concluding presentation of the results of Germany’s Federal Cultural Foundation’s extensive project on the phenomenon. More than 100 artists, architects, city planners, authors, and sociologists took part. After the exhibitions in Berlin in 2004 and in Halle and Leipzig, follow-up exhibitions are being planned for Detroit, Moscow and Manchester. A publication on the exhibitions has already appeared in English with the publishing house Verlag Hatje Cantz: Shrinking Cities – Volume 1: International Research is devoted to the topic of processes of urban shrinking on several levels. The selected contributions to the international idea competition Shrinking Cities – Reinventing Urbanism, which were presented in the exhibition in Leipzig, were also published in a special issue of the German architectural magazine archplus. At the conclusion of the project, more publications will appear, including Shrinking Cities – Volume 2 Interventions, the Complete Works and the Atlas of Shrinking Cities. Urban district culture www.stadtentwicklung.berlin.de Art and culture for empty shops The cultural quarters project “Boxion” targets empty shops around Boxhagener Place in Kreuzberg, in order to re-use them for resident and local enterprises for art and culture. This neighbourhood is a mixed area with old buildings located on the edge of the city centre. The Boxion project aims to promote the ‘culture of quarters’, improve the residential environment, its image and public areas. “Boxion 2001” provides artists and creatives with the possibility to use and animate as exhibition and communication space, 18 empty shops and restaurants. The users of the shops commit themselves to keeping firm opening times and to participate in the overall “Boxion” cultural quarter project www.boxion.de The shops are used as workplaces and extend into the public realm. At the end of the first year the shop lease is either transferred by the user or rented to other business premises in the district. Public works, such as external advertisements, shop window displays, information boards for promoting the Boxion project and activities, as well as accommodation management, are coordinated under the “social city” project. “Guerilla shopping” has also gained hold in Berlin, with high fashion brands and independent designers opening ‘secret outlets’, using vacant shops for only a few months before they become too popular. With the help of a public show of interest, over 20 organisations applied to coordinate the project. The ‘playing field’ agency was selected by a project committee for to deliver the programme. The exchange between inhabitants and artists as well as co-operation between cultural quarter projects are to be sustained beyond the life of the empty shop programme. The idea for artistic-cultural stimulation through the temporary use of shops and restaurants in the ground floor of the residential blocks, goes back to the results of a survey of local residents’ ideas and initiatives undertaken by the playing field agency – as well as those of representatives of the local district in the context of the social city area concept. Project beneficiaries include local residents (tenants, owners) and enterprises, artists and education providers/students. Finance was provided through the European Union (EFRE), the federal land programme “social city”, sponsorship/donations, and other private donations for the different shop exhibition projects. Participating organisation included: • Bad Boxhagener place – Accomodation Management • District Friedrichshain Kreuzberg – Culture Committee • Houseowners and Tenants Berlin Case Study/appendix A 37
Page 1 and 2: Strategies for creative spaces Berl
Page 3 and 4: Introduction This case study is one
Page 5 and 6: 1. Economic, political and demograp
Page 7 and 8: Figure 1. Relative concentration of
Page 9 and 10: Berlin has also improved its positi
Page 11 and 12: 1.4 Labour market and investment Be
Page 13 and 14: As a cultural tourism destination,
Page 15 and 16: 2. Creative industries Berlin has b
Page 17 and 18: The number of people working the Cr
Page 19 and 20: In terms of employment in Berlin, t
Page 21 and 22: Berlin aims to become Germany’s m
Page 23 and 24: In contrast, Kreuzberg had been the
Page 25 and 26: eginning. In contrast, the federal
Page 27 and 28: 4. Success factors The foregoing ca
Page 29 and 30: 5. References www.berlin.de www.blc
Page 31 and 32: Appendix A - Projects and initiativ
Page 33 and 34: • digital light equipment (bar li
Page 35: A location for events Künstlerhaus
Page 39 and 40: TRO Artists’ Group In 2002, the a
Page 41 and 42: Appendix B - Classification of crea
Page 43 and 44: Literature, Print and Publishing 22
Page 45: London Development Agency Palestra

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