Placemaking Connected
Placemaking Connected (1 December 2018)
The conference “Placemaking Connected” will be held on 1 December 2018, at SKLAD, Tobacco City, Plovdiv (16 Ekzarh Yosif Str), at 9.00 am. The event will mark the end of BG Be Active’s 2018 Placemaking initaitve ‘The Spot’, while aiming to facilitate further the development of the European Placemaking Network by bringing together placemaking experts from all over Europe, Bulgaria and the Balkan region.
During the last two years ‘The Spot’ placemaking initiative brought positive changes all around the country. The final conference 2017’s edition of project, also organised by BG Be Active, demonstrated the need of this type of events, which involve at the same time local and international professionals to share their experience and ideas.
Placemaking represents a comprehensive, practical and user-centred approach towards improving public space on the basis of citizens’ desires and achieved through civil activism and collaboration. In the last two years ‘The Spot’ initiative has succeeded to spread the popularity of the approach within Bulgaria by renovating 20+ public places together with local partners and communities all around the country. Not only has the project sought to physically regenerate many urban spaces, but it has also aimed at ‘injecting’ the feeling of responsibility and commitment among people in respect to the quality of the urban environment.
Apart from exchanging practices and expertise in creating sustainable and quality public environment, the conference has the ambition of inspiring the idea for all activists in the Balkan region to work collaboratively via a common platform. This will allow them to combine resources and support each other while dealing with the urban challenges in their specific contexts. The event will offer a series of professional talks, specific sessions, discussions and workshops that are based on practical experience and successful projects in the field of placemaking from all over Europe. The conference will address the vital questions: Why placemaking is important? Is being a placemaker a profession? How could we (re)create public spaces as more attractive and inclusive places with a limited financial budget?
We invite experts working in the fields of urbanism, architecture, culture, business, NGO sector, municipal employees, as well as youth workers, and everyone interested in transforming the surrounding urban environment to get up-to-date insight in placemaking with leading experts in urban planning, design and public space management. At the conference Bulgarian placemakers will be also present, including our partners from |In|Formal, who have played a major role in the BG Be Active’s project “The Spot” in the past two years. They share their perspectives on the practical application of the placemaking approach in Bulgarian context.
Due to its international nature, the conference will be conducted in both English and Bulgarian.
Pre-Registration - HERE. Details about the event and lecturers - on Facebook.
The conference is part of our educational platform FORUM 2019 that includes information workshops, lectures and meetings aimed at creating partnership networks in an effort to increase awareness, build and develop capacity and audiences in order to lay the foundations for the successful implementation of the ECC project.