Framing it, shaping it
By: Marcel Kampman
Tags: Innovation, Brand Strategy, Placemaking, Event Marketing, Design

Framing it, shaping it

Creating WeMakeThe.City, the festival that makes cities better — part 3

WeMakeThe.City. What did we mean by it? The name stands for what it is: a celebration of us, the people that make the city. In the form of a festival. But it was missing a strong, bold statement. Something that says a bit more about the goal, ambition and purpose of the event. Because it is not an ordinary festival bringing things into the city to attract people with entertainment and other things, it creates a stage for and makes visible what good is already there. The beauty and the possibilities, the facts and figures, the initiatives and the people, the efforts and results, the small and the big. So, not as an umbrella over everything to claim things. No, as a stage to put things on so they will get their momentum, the attention they deserve. Not a festival in the city as a circus coming to town, but the city as the festival.

I remembered a conversation I had with professor Urban and Regional Planning Zef Hemel when I filmed him for Happyplaces. We talked about a lot of things, but one thing that I remembered about it was an idea or an approach he suggested for the continuous improvement of cities. Amsterdam, just as several other cities like Barcelona, are suffering from the loads of tourist that visit the city, especially the know places within the city. As Amsterdam is not that big, most of those people visit the city centre, because everything that people know as Amsterdam from their travel guides, Pinterest and Instagram posts you will find there. Which causes a lot of busyness, the so-called Disneyfication of the city. So something is needed to deal with this. And festivals, according to what I remember from that conversation with Zef could be one of the strategies. The idea was to use festivals as a driver for the development of the city. Not by creating festival grounds within the city, like Tivoli in Copenhagen, but by making the city the stage. And then program a carefully planned sequence of festivals in different parts of the city, so people have those festivals as a trigger to visit different parts of the city too. Which over time could lead to a better spread of tourists over the city, and those festivals could also be the driver for the development of neighbourhoods. Festivals as a strategy to accomplish something that contributes and lasts. This is how I remembered it, and that was also what sparked what I thought what was needed to add to WeMakeThe.City. A festival with a purpose.

‘A festival to make better cities.’ No. To much just inspiration and not brave enough. And it also pretends to say that there is not much good happening which is obviously untrue being the European Capital of Innovation 2016/2017. And, it’s the Amsterdam region. Nothing in Amsterdam is an ‘a’. As the city motto on the coat of arms of Amsterdam states, Amsterdam is, or the people of Amsterdam are “Heldhaftig, Vastberaden, Barmhartig”, meaning “Valiant, Steadfast, Compassionate”. So it always should be ‘the’, not ‘a’. And since we have been awarded to be the European Capital of Innovation, we could help, lead the way, inspire other cities too to become better.

‘The festival that makes cities better.’

Better.

Bringing it all together

June 2017. Next up: launch event. After a zillion emails going back and forth with Egbert, all the elements were in place. Now it only needed its form. What would it all look like? How would we share with attendants that have been working with the working title ‘CityFest’ for six months what the name would be? Together with Stang, we worked on a set of visualisations of landmarks (buildings, places, activities, characteristics) that could represent the metropolitan area of Amsterdam, based on the visual prototype we made earlier. With as a goal that it could work really hard. That it could both be distinguished as playful so that we would be able to serve any purpose and anybody within the cities of the region. That it would become recognisable in its diversity, open, democratic with an identifiable core. Ambition was to represent the diversity and creativity of the city, where we over time would also invite other designers and makers to make work with a basic set of rules and mandatory elements, in a similar way we did for PICNIC festival.