The Creative Bureaucracy Festival returned with a live event on 2 June in Berlin. It hosted creative minds from all over the world, kicking things off with a welcoming address from Wolfgang Schmidt, the head of the German Federal Chancellery. Over 1,000 international public sector innovators, creative changemakers and over 150 speakers from 36 countries took part in this years event. The next Creative Bureaucracy Festival will take place on 15 June 2023.
The largest festival for public sector innovation!
INFORMATION ABOUT THE FESTIVAL 2022:
WHEN?
The Festival took place on 2 June 2022. Doors opened at 8am (CEST). The programme kicked off at 9am (CEST) with our Grand Opening. We offered a packed programme with a Grand Finale including our Award Ceremony at 6pm (CEST). The evening reception took place afterwards at 6:45pm (CEST).
WHERE?
The Festival took place at the event location Radialsystem in Berlin (Holzmarktstraße 33, 10243 Berlin). Radialsystem is located on the bank of the Spree River, just across the street from the train station Ostbahnhof. A five minute walk away from the station, it can be easily reached with the S-Bahn, by bus and by local and express trains. Please note that there are no parking spaces at the location. Click here for more information on the location.
WHAT’S ON?
The festival showcased over 60 keynotes, seminars, bowls and workshops as well as a variety of networking opportunities. Find more information on all speakers, sessions, topics and performances in our programme calendar! And see who came on our speakers list.
PROGRAMME 2022
FESTIVAL MAINSTAGE
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Our main auditorium hosted several keynotes, specialist lectures and project presentations on a variety of themes, from accelerating climate action and decolonising international development, to rethinking organisational structures and cross-sector relationships, designing for scale, and nurturing responsible leadership. We welcomed programme partners live on stage such as Demos Helsinki, the UNDP, UCL IIPP, digitalswitzerland, several global cities, and countless other creative changemakers working within and closely alongside public administrations. A couple of highlights included Giulio Quaggiotto of the UNDP who explored the big question: “Can Global Bureaucracies Be Reinvented?” and Susan Pettifer of City of Sydney who talked about her work on “Empowering Female Climate Leaders”. The mainstage was streamed on our website for everyone around the globe to join. |
FESTIVAL BOWL
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Our fishbowl conversations offered 50-minutes discussions and dialogues, encouraging active participation from a wider set of participants in larger group exchanges. One partner organiser helping to shape our fishbowl programme was the BMW Foundation Herbert Quandt. With the support of their RISE Cities programme, we hosted a discussion on the topic of “Cities Under Pressure”, bringing together perspectives from representatives of various global cities on the crises they face, and different creative approaches for recovery and healing. Another such partner was Salzburg Global Seminar, who were with us for the first time together with representatives of their first Public Policy News Voices Europe cohort. Their fishbowl discussed perspectives on transforming bureaucracies from the inside out to shift power balances and ensure true diversity, equity and inclusion. |
FESTIVAL SEMINARS
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In our seminars we learned about a specific key topic within a 50-minutes format, diving into detail through examples from practice. Each seminar offered practice-related input and share knowledge or other types of toolkits or methods as takeaways. We saw a variety of topics such as “Doughnut Economics in Action: How can True Smart Cities Use The Doughnut and Its Data to Thrive in Balance?” hosted by our festival partner PD and featuring perspectives from various city ‘doughnut initiatives’ from across Germany and Europe. Another couple of highlights included a discussion between global city leaders on how to nurture great public leadership in contradictory environments, hosted by the new Bloomberg Center For Public Innovation, and a deep-dive into how to fight the fear of imagination in governments from last year’s award winner Demos Helsinki, drawing on their recent work on The Imaginary Crisis. |
CBF ACADEMY
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How can social transformation processes be democratised? If creative bureaucracy strengthens our agency and capability to act, we can fundamentally change the way we feed, power or move ourselves. At the Creative Bureaucracy Festival Day, Politics for Tomorrow and Dark Matter Labs invited you to four sessions that opened up a collective workspace for experimenting, learning from each other and expanding our perspectives. Since 2018, the CBF Academy has been addressing the question of “HOW” to build better public futures together. This hands-on environment welcomes everybody interested in supporting a future-fit public sector and changing systems with and for society. Your creative contribution to “Democratising Transformation” is essential! |
NETWORKING LOUNGE
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The festival offered plenty of opportunities to connect, network and exchange ideas about your work or discuss the festival’s topics. At our Festival Networking Lounge you were able to take part in diverse meet-ups, speed dating and other facilitated encounters between international city leaders, government innovation agencies, and the various other creative changemakers who were joining us. Here we gave you the opportunity and helped you to connect with other interesting speakers and participants who were at the Festival! As a special treat we were thrilled to have a special guest in our backyard – The “Tiny Town Hall”: a municipality in human size. A place to meet and experience participation and public innovation at eye level! |
FESTIVAL PARTNER PD
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The six PD sessions at the Digital Kick-off Day on 24 March included insights on what makes a modern public administration, an innovative concept for collaboration between GovTech start-ups and the administration, and details of PD’s sustainability strategy. “The live festival is now not only a great opportunity to engage with experts from administrative practice, academia and civil society”, says Stéphane Beemelmans, Managing Director of PD, adding, “We are looking forward to high-level keynotes, panel and fishbowl discussions, interactive workshops and seminars – and, of course, more exciting PD projects that we will present together with representatives of our clients on stages big and small!” |