Taking The Initiative
Client: Bergen Kommune
Workshops: 8 online, 3 in person
Location: Loddefjord & Olsvik & Arna, Norway
Participants: 15-20
Taking the Initiative is a bold experiment from a city authority cultural department intent on re-imagining the value it offers to the people and communities it serves.
Since 2019 there has been a collaboration between the City of Bergen Cultural Department (Norway) and Lisa Baxter (The Experience Business, UK) who I have been working with closely on this project. It was established to explore how the Cultural Department could play a more vital role in community flourishing at a hyper-local level.
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How do communities define their own culture and what it means to flourish? The aim when we set out was to host 8 workshop sessions, during the pandemic, over the course of 8 weeks, to discover how local people classify creativity. We started in Loddefjord & Olsvik, and are now expanding to Arna.
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After the initial 8 workshops designed by Lisa Baxter, we had a clear vision for how the community might define its own course of creative flourishing. We want everything we do to be powered by grass-roots self-determination and collective action, and in a way that fundamentally rebalances power between civic and civil society.
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As a result of these workshops, Bergen Kommune have now hired two artists, who’s aim is to get to know local people in Loddefjord and Olsvik, and co-create experiences that contribute to the flourishing of the community. It is an on-going project with many more possibilities emerging.
