Save the Date: The 7th Creative Bureaucracy Festival will be held between the 13th -15th June 2024

The 6th Festival finished in the 15th June 2023 and for the first time we held an invite only Global Government Innovators Forum on the 14th June.

In 73 sessions, with more than 150 speakers from over 30 countries we presented imaginative solutions for the public administration of tomorrow: better coordination of collective action on the biggest challenges of our time, faster digitalisation, strategies for comprehensive equality, helping empower a more skilled work force. Our themes explored the dynamics behind a bureaucracy that is trusting, imaginative and knows how to unlearn past patterns when necessary

Over 1300 creative bureaucrats and their allies came to the Festival at the Radialsystem, Berlin with a more than a 1000 online.

We gave awards in five different categories to the following innovative minds and places:

The Large Scale Impact award was given to the City of Bogotá for its continued innovative capacity across time which has embedded inventiveness within its city making. This is best exemplified most recently by the city’s pioneering Care System, the first urban master plan that places caregivers at the centre of policy and service delivery design.

The Innovator of the Year was given to Eric Hubbard from the City of Freetown in Sierra Leone. There uncontrolled deforestation and rapid urban expansion exposed the city to extreme climate vulnerabilities. As senior advisor to the Mayor of Freetown, Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr since 2019, Eric has guided the #FreetownTheTreeTown campaign that planted, digitally tracked and grew 1 million trees by 2023 with more than a million to follow an effort that is increasing the city’s vegetation cover by 50%.

The Power Shifter award was given to Kristina Lunz the founder of the Centre for Feminist Foreign Policy which aims to rebalance the power inequalities. The CFFP actively addresses topics and systems where the current status is rooted in patriarchal values and perpetuates systemic injustices negatively impacting different people in differing ways based on their gender, race, ethnicity, class, socioeconomic status, sexuality, and more.

The Legacy award was given to Jaime Lerner, former 3-term mayor of Curitiba and governor of the state of Paraná from the 1970s onwards. As chief architect of the Curitiba Master Plan, Curitiba became the posterchild of innovative city making from creating the BRT (bus rapid transit) system now copied by over 180 cities, or incentives for recycling, including exchanging bottles, cans and other recyclables for food or sea waste being bought at the same price as fish caught. He implemented plans swiftly — in just 72 hours converting the city’s downtown into Brazil’s first pedestrian mall.

Young  Faces – Young Spaces award supported by the Hertie Stiftung went “Rise and Shine” from Šentjur, Slovenia for the involvement and participation of over 260 children and young people (13-29 years) in the design of the area municipality.

The Creative Bureaucracy

Read a recent article about the Festival: https://govinsider.asia/intl-en/article/the-creative-bureaucracy-festival-models-a-new-path-for-public-administration