Festival Report
1,302 City Camp attendees
City Camp was attended by 1,302 people from a variety of backgrounds, cultures and industries. We worked to make many of the events child friendly and 17 children were welcomed to events with their parents.
750 people attended TEDx Brum
TEDxBrum was programmed at the epicentre of City Camp, with 10 of the 15 speakers hosting conversations, talks and dinners to allow attendees to dive deeper into topics.
31 May - 18 June 2016 An Overview
64 speakers
Thought leaders came from across the UK and abroad to share their ideas. This included speakers from Scotland, Canada, Portugal, USA and The Netherlands.
45 events
36 organisations 12
Talks & Panels
5
Campfire Chats
5
Art & Performances
9
Themed Dinners
5
Workshops & Hack Days
15 events hosted by the community
6
Learning Circles
3
Masterclasses
Of the 18 events that were pitched by the community, 15 of them were programmed and took place as part of the festival, enabling the people of Birmingham to explore the things that matter to them.
The RSA, Grant Thornton UK LLP, Beatfreeks, Spaghetti, NESTA, Basic Income UK, FoodLab Detroit, Good Lab, WikiHouse, UnLtd, The Self Agency, Women’s Equality Party, Change.org, Node, Tech For Good and more brought their expertise and latest ideas directly to City Camp sessions.
447 meals
Food played an important role in convening people and capturing conversations, with 447 of our visitors eating together across the course of the festival.
What do you want Birmingham to be known for?
How can data play a role in building a better Birmingham?
What is a ‘better’ Birmingham? How might we build a world class city?
What is the role of technology in building a better Birmingham?
How might we build a better Birmingham together? What does good regeneration in Birmingham look like for you? Tell us about a project that has inspired you. How might housing play a role in addressing some of the challenges we face as a city?
What could the Universal #BasicIncome enable you to do? During City Camp we explored 11 questions that we felt resonated with the big challenges that the city is facing now, and will face in the near future. These questions were designed to provoke personal responses from people who attend City Camp.
How might we make Birmingham the best place to raise children, together?
The following pages give an overview of the responses to four of these questions which evoked a strong response.
What is the Future of Good?
How might we build a better Birmingham together? There is no ‘us and them’ any more, it’s just us. All of us. Birmingham is an ‘us’ – one of incredible institutions, organisations, people, projects and ideas happening across the city – but how might we pioneer a better city together? Locally and globally, we are now interconnected in more ways than we can imagine. Together, we have the power to do more than ever before. It’s time to break down the walls and connect across public, private and civic sectors in order to build a city we can be proud of. People are doing great work in these sectors and making headway in dealing with some of the big challenges we face as a city. We asked this question because we wanted to provoke a conversation about how we bring all of this together in new ways. What does radical collaboration look like? How do we open the conversation and help everyone feel like they have a place? We brought together people from right across the city, for 45 events that covered a wide range of topics that bridged the perceived barriers, brought people together, and created new spaces for a different type of conversation to happen. Food played an important role in convening people and conversations. Over 450 of our visitors shared meals together. The things that were discussed were framed by the events but varied in subject matter - from how we make more inclusive spaces, that are sensitive to those at particular intersections of society, to thinking about human infrastructure so that people can have more agency over the things that matter to them. When it comes to talking about and discussing things that really matter to people it is important that we remember that views differ and people can be passionate about their opinions. Creating spaces that can hold and support this is crucial to moving the city forward in a more collaborative, less adversarial, oppositional way. Since CityCamp Birmingham we prototyped 2 sessions applying what people said and tackled the subjects of How to be a Change Agent and What Do We Do About Brexit? Especially in regards to brexit the emotions are still raw and finding a genuine space for participation and collaboration is hard. We will endeavor to continue creating spaces that bring people together for constructive, if difficult, conversations.
What could the universal #BasicIncome enable you to do? The Universal Basic Income (UBI) has recently gained a lot of attention thanks to high profile pilot schemes all over the world, and serious discussion in places like Switzerland about implementation on a larger scale. Interestingly it bridges many different spaces; venture capitalists, humanitarians and bureaucrats are all talking about it. For lots of different reasons this subject is engaging many people on many different missions. We asked this question because as well as the practical conversation about how we implement it, we also wanted to explore what latent potential this would unlock from our city and its people. We were joined by experts from the RSA, NESTA and Basic Income UK for talks, panels and a half day workshop. In these sessions, participants were able to talk to some of the people leading the work into what basic income could look like in the UK, ask questions, and for some explore the subject for the first time with people that have a deep understanding of it. People’s reasons for attending the events and engaging with the question varied, and the idea had a mixed reception. For some it felt like the answer to many of the challenges they are facing, but for others it seemed like an idealistic utopian vision. This variety of perspectives was beneficial to the conversation as instead of existing in an echochamber it was out in the open for all to critique and come to a better understanding, together. By reframing the conversation from the specific analysis of its implementation and starting with the impact on real people we built a more inclusive and neutral starting point. By coming from a place of optimism people were able to freely explore the possibilities that this unlocks. Here are some of the responses this question received. • “#UBI would allow me to really think about what I want to do with my life.” • “#UBI would allow me to learn things I can’t at the moment and contribute to society.” • “#UBI would allow me to pursue what is important and not worry about whether myself or family will make it.” • “#UBI would allow me to do the work I love, mentoring struggling young people, that I can’t support myself upon currently” A recurring theme was that UBI helps to reframe so many more positive conversations and possibilities, and will unlock so much, that we can’t begin to know what that future looks like.
Building on the support created over the 2 weeks of City Camp, many more people now know where to go to continue this conversation. Building public and political support will be crucial if we are to see this conversation succeed, and it seems from our findings that this will be best achieved at scale through active demonstrations. Basic Income UK plan to run live experiments to prove and improve the idea. To make this happen in Birmingham they will need support from many different people. We will continue to hold a space where this conversation can grow, connecting people to points of action like these experiments as they come up, and helping more people to see the potential positive impacts of this for themselves, families and communities. Some questions that the CityCamp community would still like to explore further related to UBI: • What does this mean for young people? How do they view a future with choices and without constraint? • How do we build the capacity in the city for people to be able to take advantage of the potential opportunity that comes from this? • What knock on effects will this have on infant mental health? • At what age should UBI start? • How do we move the political conversation forward?
Do you have ideas on how we can move forward with any of these? Talk to us at Impact Hub Birmingham about hosting an open project night meet up, and lets get the ball rolling.
How might we make Birmingham the best place to raise children, together? Childcare affects all of us. For a lot of parents it is a fact of life, and its impact shapes their relationships and careers for years. Most importantly for our children, it is part of what helps shape their most informative years. For many of us the effect is indirect but it impacts us in ways that we do not realise or acknowledge too often, whether that is in our extended families, work spaces or wider communities. We all have a responsibility, to each other and future generations, to make childcare the best it can possibly be. Due to the fact that childcare has an impact on all of us and links into many different conversations, it is something that came up across the entire 2 weeks in many different ways. However there were two programmed events that focused specifically on it. An African proverb you often hear in relation to this subject is that “it takes a village to raise a child”. We asked this question because we want to genuinely make Birmingham the best place to raise children, together. We were not just talking about childcare and its challenges. During the 2 weeks of City Camp we actively encouraged parents to bring children along, and wherever possible enabled them to participate. This allowed us to actively address and highlight the challenges around participation many parents are faced with and challenge people’s perception about what is child or family friendly. There were children with us when discussing issues around women’s equality, basic income and childcare itself. We also had a dedicated area with books, toys and craft materials where both children and adults could take a time out.
What does good regeneration in Birmingham look like for you? How do we design and develop a Birmingham for the real life people of Birmingham? Birmingham increasingly sits at the precipice of a great opportunity. The combination of being closer to the heart of London than many London boroughs; the cusp of a demographic dividend – one of the youngest cities in Europe; and a city centre with latent space and capacity to radically accommodate new growth. How will we evolve our numerous master plans to accommodate this emerging lived vitality of Birmingham, so that they do not just leverage the emerging real-life “asset value” of Birmingham – in a tokenistic marketing sense and branding sense – but as a profound basis of radically inclusive growth?
We found from this inclusive and active approach to involving people in thinking about the future of the city that people want to be heard, they have ideas, and they want to be part of making them happen. This is not about organisations and institutions taking on all of the burden of regeneration, but how we create the spaces for people to be constructively Experts from around the world, bridging public, private and third sectors involved early enough to actually shape the things that affect them. joined events to offer provocations to “rediscover” the city that many people feel they know so well, and invited them to reimagine how all the Two of the ideas from the Urban Hack Day are in the process of production. regeneration possibilities might be more inclusive of them, the “real” This is happening as a result of connections that were made during the event, and a collaborative sharing of resources and networks as a result. Birmingham. One idea will be looking at how we reimagine space for cars in the city and another will reimagine under utilised space, namely the railway arches Two events in particular dug more deeply into this question: running through digbeth. Making space for the real Birmingham - An interactive talk and panel, In regards to the “Making space for the real Birmingham” evening two with global lineup of speakers. projects are moving forward through conversation and active prototyping. Urban Experiments - A full day workshop with citizens redesigning One is an Impact Hub Birmingham powered initiative called #DemoDev that is reframing how we think about housing in the city. Another is “The underutilised space in the city. Artist Hotel”, an idea sparked during the event that has been picked up The City Centre has 4.5million square feet of space that is devoted by MAIA Creatives. Working together with Impact Hub Birmingham they to retail; space that is occupied and used by people but designed and are exploring how we can make this city more artist friendly, and build it dedicated to consumption. The spaces to stop and ponder, to play and with and for them. A vision for the city with arts and culture embedded at to just be are few and far between. From the bull statue at the Bullring the heart, they want to build a hotel that attracts talent from all over the Shopping Centre, it is 1.2km to the nearest public play area. In that same world and promotes artist collaboration through co-living and working. radius there are 105 car parks that cover 276,395 sq ft of land. In other words enough for 55,000 swings. We invited opinions from participants regarding these issues, and rather than prescribing solutions to them we instead created the space for collaborations and new ideas to emerge.
If you would like to be involved in helping these move forward contact Impact Hub Brum @ImpactHubBrum, and MAIA creatives @MAIACreatives.
Event Types
45 events Across the duration of the 20 day festival, 45 events took place in a variety of different formats which we loosely categorised into 7 event types. We have summarised a selection of the events from each of the different categories to give a brief overview and insight into the content and how the community responded.
12
Talks & Panels
5
Campfire Chats
5
9
Art & Performances
Themed Dinners
5
Workshops & Hack Days
6
Learning Circles
Event Titles • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Hub Birthday Breakfast Crafternoon Tea Global Gov Jam Art Against The Grain The Near Future of Doing Good with Vinod Rajasekaran Hub Birthday Bash Making Workshop with Allison Sadler Doink Data Rave Taking Power Back with Simon Parker Participatory Economy with Simon Willis Change 24 with Beatfreeks Digital Storytelling Circle with Contented Why Should We Prevent PREVENT? Recoding Cities & Redefining Urban Commons with Thomas Ermacora Q&A with Sacha Romanovitch Basic Income Talk - a Solution to Which Challenge? Open Data in Birmingham with RnR TEDxBrum Big Lunch Digbeth FoodLab Talk with Devita Davidson Basic Income Workshop with Basic Income UK Good Lab Workshop with Lauren Currie Bid Writing for Charities & Community Groups Workshop with Get Grants
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
#Upfront with Lauren Currie Radical Collaboration with Co.Lab Exploring Collective Intelligence Making Space for the Real Birmingham Technology for Autism Inclusion & Cyberbullying Detection Dinner with Victoria Yaneva Radical Childcare Stay & Play What is Human Infrastructure? with Simon Gough Radical Childcare Dinner Tech For Good Brum Squared Brunch A Space for Orlando Seeking Refuge If You Build It Screening Visibility Circle with Andrew Lightheart Women’s Equality Party with Sophie Walker Build Your Own Film Night with Flatpack Illustrated Brum Creative Meet-Up Street Wisdom Urban Experiments BAME Organ Donation Dinner with Adnan Sharif Youth Inequality in Birmingham with Beatfreeks City of Colours
3
Masterclasses
Birmingham Global Gov Jam 31 May - 2 June Birmingham Global Gov Jam brought citizens together with local government and public sector professionals to prototype ideas of how to build a better city. The gov jam is an annual event which takes place simultaneously over 3 days in cities around the world united by a secret theme. Birmingham participants interpreted the theme and collaborated in two teams to explore ideas around trust and belonging. The jams are an environment where people are able to explore their creativity and connect with others to explore new possibilities.
Recoding Cities & Redefining Urban Commons 10 June Thomas Ermacora is a regeneration architect, tech-for-good entrepreneur and futures thinker focused on urban sustainability and community resilience. He joined us for a morning talk to share his ideas of alternative urban design, planning and architecture focused on participatory placemaking and how to combine bottom up and top down means of regenerating neighborhoods. The event was attended by local urban designers, aspiring architects, people interested in community development and members of the Impact Hub Birmingham community. Attendees expressed how this event equipped them with new vocabulary to be able to articulate how regeneration does not need to be solely driven by the few but can involve the many.
Open Data in Birmingham 10 June One of the questions proposed in the festival was ‘How can data play a role in building a better Birmingham?’ This particular question was of interest to RnR, a social enterprise based in Impact Hub Birmingham who are dedicated to supporting the use of tech infrastructure for impact and social justice and are involved with the Birmingham Node of the Open Data Institute. They pitched to host a learning circle as part of City Camp to talk about Open Data in Birmingham. This session was attended by 10 people and participants left with a better understanding of what Open Data actually is, how it is being used locally and what possibilities might be if more thought and attention could be given to Open Data initiatives in Birmingham.
Making Space for the Real Birmingham 13 June Making Space for the Real Birmingham was a conversation about regeneration about how we could build Birmingham as a world class city without losing its soul and character. More than 40 people attended and listened to a series of provocations about current trends and future possibilities for the city. Participants and panelists then explored these provocations further through table discussions sharing their own ideas and experiences of Birmingham. This event made evident the power of taking a systems view of with people at the centre. Connections were made that created a sense that anything is possible.
#Upfront with Lauren Currie 13 June Following on from her TEDxBrum talk, Lauren Currie hosted a workshop to delve deeper into #Upfront, an idea she presented about how conferences around the world could be more diverse and accessible if keynote speakers share their stage with audience members. Attendees included the TEDxBrum attendees who shared the stage with Lauren during her talk and they had the opportunity to reflect on the experience and how it made them feel. It became apparent that this seemingly small intervention had a profound impact on those who were involved in that they were able to experience the feelings and sensations of being on a stage and manage them without the pressure of having to actually speak. Conversations progressed into a more nuanced conversation around empowerment and sharing power and the conditions that need to be created to enable this to happen. The session closed with participants sharing ideas of where they might be able influence stages in their local communities to be more accessible and diverse.
#RadicalChildcare Dinner 14 June Childcare is something that affects all of us, both directly and indirectly. This dinner brought people together to share thoughts and ideas over food, about what works about the current system and what could be potentially be improved. When thinking about alternatives to the status quo, new ideas can feel radical and often utopian, unrealistic or unachievable. Unfortunately this doesn’t make for a great base in thinking about how things could be different. Actively showing examples where people are trying new, often radically different, alternatives allows us to find balance and really think differently about how, and why, we do childcare. We were joined by Mark Barclay from the group Risky Play, Simon Gough talking about Unschooling and Amy Martin who is actively exploring #RadicalChildcare in Birmingham. People left the event with tangible examples of how they themselves could think about and do childcare differently and networks and new contacts that could support them in exploring this further. We wait eagerly to see how the conversation around #RadicalChildcare grows in the city, with people actively demonstrating their ideas.
Brum Squared Brunch 15 June Brum Squared brunch was a meetup of photographers, photography enthusiasts and people interested in storytelling through images who came together to discuss possibilities for the Brum Squared concept. Convened by documentary photographer Alison Baskerville, Brum Squared provides a space where professional and amateur photographers can come together to do photo walks of specific geographical sections of the city. Using squares of the A to Z as their focal constraint, attendees have an opportunity to really take observe and notice things about their city that they would ordinarily overlook. For this brunch, we were joined by Andrew Jackson and Dan Burwood, co-founders of Some Cities Community Interest Company, who use photography to give people a voice in their communities. They shared their knowledge and expertise with the group, some of whom have been interested in working with Alison Baskerville to develop Brum Squared into other areas of the city. This discussions highlighted the importance of not allowing trained photographers and imagemakers to dominate the way our stories are told. Since this meetup, Brum Squared have collaborated with the Northfield Arts Forum to run a Brum Squared in the Northfield area, engaging local people in the arts and helping them to connect with their local areas.
Campfire chats
Flatpack: Build your own Film Night 16 June Hosted by Flatpack Film Festival, this event brought people together to learn about what it takes to put on a film night covering key topics such as licensing, procuring event management. “It can be hard to find ways of picking up and sharing this type of knowledge, the event was really helpful in giving the the confidence and knowledge to make my own event happen” Paul Stringer The event was well attended and has spawned many new new independent film initiatives that will continue beyond the event. One of these is “Yellow Wednesdays” which will be hosted on a regular basis from Impact Hub Birmingham. There are many filmmakers rising from Brum, Yellow Wednesday is set to count itself amongst one of the vibrant spaces to discover, consume and discuss film in the city. It will be hosting and showcasing local independent film talent and is open to all to get involved. To take part send a link to your films or trailers to: info@paulstringerartist.co.uk Follow the program of films at : bitly.com/YellowWednesdays
Urban Experiments 17 June This urban hack day brought people together to propose and explore a series of small scale ‘urban experiments’ across Birmingham for people to experience the city in a new way, enjoy and admire. Hosted by Node Urban Design and Impact Hub Birmingham, the day started with an inspiring morning of provocations and a panel discussion from world class practitioners with global examples of what is possible. This was followed by a short dynamic hack combining the knowledge and creative talents of attendees. This event connected people from varied backgrounds, sectors and industries to collaboratively bring their skills to bear in a new way. It was well attended by 29 people that worked in 5 teams to produce 6 concepts for 4 underused sites in Digbeth to conceptualise and mock up what is possible.
BAME Organ Donation 17 June Hosted by Nobel Prize nominee Dr Adnan Sharif we brought together people from across the city to openly discuss the challenges facing BAME communities in regards to organ donation, building on the conversation started though his TEDxBrum talk. Organ donor shortages and static waiting lists are leading patients to take their lives into their own hands, with 10-15% of transplant activity now considered illegal or unethical. Speaking frankly Dr Sharif shared with us the realities of organ theft and forced organ harvesting globally, and together we discussed what we can do to combat these ills across cultures. The conversation, though heavy, had a definite optimism and energy to make a change. It’s not every day that you get to sit down with a nobel prize nominee and get to ask all the questions that are on you mind, especially when it comes to subjects like this that generally go undiscussed anyway. The opportunity was one of a kind and faced with the shocking realities, people were left with a real sense of urgency and injustice regarding the situation many from BAME communities face.
Youth Inequality in Birmingham 17 June Youth Inequality in Birmingham brought together passionate people from Birmingham to explore highlight and discuss the multiple disadvantages and inequalities that face the children of the city, including; poverty, mental health. Beatfreeks invited Kojey Radical, a rising star who exposes inequality though his spoken word, to perform as a provocation /stimulus and to avoid the space becoming just a talking shop but rather a practical space to discuss the use of art in overcoming adversity on both a personal and structural level. A mixed group of 30 people from the community came together to share food and ideas, this showed the thirst for this type of space. Post Brexit we held a similar event, this time it was around the rise in hate crime. Moving forward we will build on this by having a more regular space to discuss civic issues. Partnering with Impact Hub we will collaborate on the role of this as part of the 21st century Town Hall.
Event Host Reflections Illustrated Brum We hosted this event because we were part of the TEDxBrum 2016 team and heard about the opportunity to pitch an event to City Camp through this. I feel our event was successful in bringing together a varied and ‘new’ group of individuals who we as a creative partnership (Illustrated Brum) had not interacted with in the city before, which in turn reiterated the need to provide a space for individuals from different disciplines to meet and collaborate. We learned that many people are having the same conversations or navigating the same terrains; that by being generous in sharing experiences and information can eliminate the steps involved in moving forward. As Illustrated Brum we are looking to host other meet up/spaces but also extending our work with those within the city, whilst pursuing a project we have been developing using feedback from our event.
Sarah Isaacs Illustrated Brum
Radical Collaboration The theme of the event and the audience was right so a good opportunity to introduce Colab at Birmingham. And you made it open. Open is good. For the level of preparation we had we did well. People were involved and we had a very diversified group. We lacked on the follow through though. Events are hard to put together no matter what you have or where you are. You did good but I was expecting other levels of participation is such a big city and with such an amazing team behind. Anyhow it was very familiar which let us connect in other ways.
Bid Writing for Charities & Community Groups We hosted this event because we had a desire to support Impact Hub Birmingham and its aims. The event was very well attended at extremely short notice, showing the reach of both the networks of our organisation and Impact Hub. It was also positive to see that this type of session will bring attendees out in good numbers, especially as the vast majority of participants had never visited Impact Hub prior to this session. We were delighted to support the initiative and hope we added some value.
As a result of this we made more connections and new friends but what we learned is that the idea of ‘together’ is still the conundrum.
Pedro Reis Co.Lab
Get Grants Fundraising Consultancy
“If You Build It” Film Night If we want to build a better city, looking to the future is extremely important. We have to think about how we enable young people to shape the city and play a part in building the things that will affect theirs, and others, relationships with it. Part of this is going to building the capacity for these young people to participate, on a practical and conceptual level. The film attracted a broad mix of people, all attending for related but different reasons. This gave us a rich and interesting conversation, but also helped lay the groundwork in building and interested network of people. It would have been great to see more people from the education sector there but it is part of what we are continuing to grow. The same thing that makes radical ideas so interesting, also makes them feel risky and sometimes a little scary. The relative security that the status quo offers feels like a good thing, but ultimately makes exploring these ideas hard and reinforces the need to “keep things the same”. To help people move forward and begin to adopt some of these more “radical” ideas we have to find ways to actively test and demonstrate them. From this we have started a conversation about how we can practically demonstrate and test the ideas in this film, in the context of Birmingham. Connecting with the RSA and the RSA Academies in the city we are exploring what a collaboration that brings design thinking and participatory place making into the class room could look like. We will be hosting a second screening and panel event to start this process going. Building a better Birmingham together means creating spaces for our young people to play a role in that to. Involving them in how the city grows and develops is a part of what constitutes good regeneration, how we build the skills in them to design and build with empathy what the future of the city looks like is paramount. Basic Income is part of what might help us unlock this potential in young people, in supporting the people with skills to pass them on and creating opportunities for young people to have viable opportunities to be involved. Finally if we want Birmingham to be the best place to raise children, together, we need to think about what their role in that is.
Chris Sadler Spaghetti.
Urban Experiments We worked with Impact Hub Birmingham to put this event on as we saw an opportunity to open people’s eye to an alternative city. I felt a great atmosphere in the room, everybody seemed inspired by the talks and felt like they could really change Birmingham. Ideas were fantastic! I learned that people really do care about Birmingham! Also that its hard to make changes in this current system - need to think differently to inspire change. We have set up a working group to try and get an urban experiment on the ground. Going out for a beer with someone I met at CityCamp next week! It reinforced that a city needs to be built by its people, for its people. This has long been an belief of mine, however to see ‘non experts’ (I hate that term) get involved and flourish is fantastic. The city is not an investment, the city is ours.
James Cox Node Urban Design
Street Wisdom We pitched our event to City Camp because we wanted to try facilitating a Street Wisdom session, having participated in one in Brum, and thought it would be nice to jump on the energy around City Camp. Participants enjoyed the experience and most of them took part in a great reflective, sharing discussion which is the final part of a Street Wisdom event. I picked up that it was challenging for staff based in the RSA House in London to get their heads around promoting an event that we were running through City Camp - they didn’t get what it was all about.
Lorna Prescott Dudley CVS
1,302 attendees We welcomed 1,302 people to City Camp from a variety of backgrounds, cultures and industries. Many were repeat visitors who went on their own personal learning journeys throughout the festival. The next few pages contain testimonials to give an insight into the experiences of some of the City Camp attendees.
Richard Lewis “ I came to City Camp to take part in Gov Jam. I was looking to gain more experience of collaborative working methods and to meet people from the Birmingham area interested in design. There were a few ideas that really stuck with me. The value of teams with diverse backgrounds who are able to listen to each other’s ideas and then act on them. Creating an agreed work culture through discussion was something I also found a good idea. I also gained an improved understanding of how to frame questions in order to solicit answers that help identify problems (this was a key takeaway for me). Having the opportunity to contribute on areas of design that I might avoid was also very helpful. At work it has helped me to take a step back. I’ve involved colleagues more in the design process and am able to listen better to colleagues ideas. It has also helped me to develop future career decisions.”
Events Richard Attended
Birmingham Gov Jam
TEDx Brum
Other Community Events: Open Project Night & Bab works
Pedro Reis “I came to City Camp to learn more about the terrific work being done in Birmingham. I came from Portugal and had heard a lot about Birmingham through a friend of mind. My biggest reaction from City Camp were about refreshing and inspiring ways we can use language for change. Instead of blaming the others look both ways because there’s no us and them anymore. I am particularly interested in the idea of Universal Basic Income an will be exploring this further. ”
Events Pedro Attended
Taking Power Back with Simon Parker
Participatory Economy with Simon Willis
Recoding Cities & Redefining Urban Commons with Thomas Ermacora
Q&A with Sacha Romanovitch
Basic Income Talk - a Solution to Which Challenge?
Open Data in Birmingham with RnR
TEDxBrum
Radical Collaboration with Co.Lab (Hosted)
Making Space for the Real Birmingham
What is Human Infrastructure? with Simon Gough
Radical Childcare Dinner
Harry Alimo “I came to City Camp to really see what Birmingham had to offer and to meet more innovators in the city in which I have lived and thrived in. I have been inspired by many of the ideas including Wiki-House, Urban Experiments, Basic Income and Food Labs. The Urban Experiments Hack day was a great experience, to think about unused areas which the public can re-acquire from the city council to use and bring the community together. I would like join with open project night again soon to see what I can do with some of these ideas.�
Events Harry Attended
Recoding Cities & Redefining Urban Commons with Thomas Ermacora
Basic Income Talk - a Solution to Which Challenge?
Radical Collaboration with Co. Lab
Making Space for the Real Birmingham
What is Human Infrastructure? with Simon Gough
Tech for Good
A Space for Orlando
Urban Experiments
Youth Inequality in Birmingham
Ken Aseda “I came to City Camp to gain an understanding of what it means to make an impact in the community. I gained a greater understanding of how trust and relationships are developed through participating in the Global Gov Jam. The group working experience at the Gov Jam was different to anything I’ve been involved in before and so I am now exploring ideas around leadership further.”
Events Ken Attended
Global Gov Jam
Hub Birthday Bash
Taking Power Back with Simon Parker
Basic Income Talk - A Solution to which Challenge?
Open Data Birmingham
Radical Collaboration with Co. Lab
What is Human Infrastructure?
Tech for Good
If You Build it Screening
Visibility Circle
Build your own Film Night
Youth Inequality in Birmingham
Mario Saad “ I came to City Camp to network, and hear new ideas and perspectives, push the culture, make a change, be apart of an amazing collective. The things that stood out for me most were being an activist, going out and making a difference, having regular conversation with people about the issues that we face as a city. A highlight for me was the Upfront idea and being on stage with Lauren at TEDxBrum. It helped me build some confidence with being on stage in front of people which will help me with my musical aspirations.”
Events Mario Attended
Basic Income Talk - a Solution to Which Challenge?
TEDxBrum
Radical Collaboration with Co. Lab
Making Space for the Real Birmingham
Tech for Good
A Space for Orlando
#Upfront with Lauren Currie
Visibility Circle
Women’s Equality Party with Sophie Walker
Build your own Film Night with Flatpack
Street Wisdom
Youth Inequality in Birmingham
BAME Organ Donation Dinner
Urban Experiments
Sophia Ireland “I attended City Camp initially for the talk with Sacha Romanovitch because the work I do within my organisation ‘The Access Project’ involves engaging with corporates as partners to deliver their corporate social responsibility. I was interested in her thoughts around reshaping her business in a more socially responsible way. For me personally, I was inspired by her ideas which moved beyond the idea of corporate social responsibility towards how we reshape businesses so that they are socially responsible. I enjoyed the format of City Camp because it was an opportunity to be more conversational rather than have to sit and listen to a talk. This session led on very well to the basic income talk which helped me to think about things more on a systems level. My work is around social mobility and helping students from disadvantaged backgrounds and so I am often working with children who have free school meals. This conversation expanded my mind to thinking about the future of our work as an organisation.”
Events Sophia Attended
Q&A with Sacha Romanovitch
Basic Income Talk - A Solution to which Challenge?
Women’s Equality Party with Sophie Walker
Social Media @CityCampBrum Twitter Stats
627 527 14.5k Followers
Mentions
Profile visits
301k Impressions
Blog posts Why TEDxBrum was even better than the hashtag says by Lauren Currie “This is about giving credit where it’s due and realising that it’s possible to do things differently. ” Read more Does digital help make our world more inclusive and accessible? by Michaela Hodges “When we ask the question ‘what is the role of technology in building a better Birmingham?’ or ‘does digital increase accessibility?’ we can’t lose sight of our own role in this.” Read more Making Space for the Real Birmingham by Indy Johar “How do we design and develop a Birmingham for the real life of Birmingham. Not just the needs of financial instruments & asset markets.“ Read more
Team Reflections
Imandeep Kaur
Andy Reeve
Louise Byng
I have always been inspired by cities that have vibrant festivals of ideas. After 5 years of energetic, inspiring and growing TEDxBrum events we knew that it was time for more. Impact Hub Birmingham helped us create a space where ideas could come together, but now it was time to spread out. It was always part of our aspirations to bring some of the best thinkers, doers, makers and creators out of the big capital cities they normally share ideas in, whilst also surfacing and highlighting the incredible talent and passion that exists in Birmingham. City Camp Birmingham 2016 was our first step in doing this.
City Camp was one of those rare opportunities where I felt free to talk candidly about the issues we face and to open up a genuine dialogue to start tackling these issues. It gave a space where everyone regardless of role, organisation or background was free to dream, free to discuss and free to debate the way in which we can collectively contribute to building a better city.
The openly curated approach to City Camp allowed a very authentic programme to develop, one that was not only varied but also incredibly meaningful, with members of the community proposing and hosting their own learning circles, workshops and more about what was important to them. This brought with it some unique challenges in terms of programming, but it was great to see each event be realised together under the City Camp banner but with their own personalities, topics and formats, culminating in a lively experience for team, members and visitors to the festival alike.
We engaged citizens from far and wide, whilst also bringing some exciting names to Birmingham. It was a great prototype, a chance for us to test what works and what doesn’t and we were lucky to have the support of Barrow Cadbury to help test this out. Next year, I hope we will have more venues across the city to host events and get even wider across the city, building spaces where people from across cultures, sectors and practices can come together to share, create and build on inspiring ideas.
I would love to see it grow and include more events right across the city to reach an even broader audience and surface a whole new set of ideas.
For me, it was really special for thought-leaders in different fields from across the world to present alongside citizens with a shared purpose. It would be great to take this further with future events, bringing in more conversations and challenges from different areas of the city, as well as encouraging people and projects doing amazing work to take their ideas into different communities to gain new perspectives