Bucharest's bid for European Capital of Culture 2021 is in

Just saw this piece of short news, apparently the team at ARCUB sent in the application to the Ministry of Culture. I don’t know what it ended up looking/ reading like at the end, but apparently the concept they went with is InVisible City.

I have sent summaries of Futurespotters throughout as an exercise in citizen engagement, as well as a capture from the Edgesense app we are using to quickly visualize the community. Basically we are making a case that this nascent network in Bucharest can grow to prototype and research new models of working together and operate in sync with a global community. The aim would be to turn Bucharest into a hub for European citizen driven innovation. A response to a proposal continuing to build Futurespotters as part of the bid is pending, and partially depends on the city being shortlisted. Anyway, Bucharest members in the Edgeryders network are in pink below:


The Edgesense app is available here, should you want to play with it: http://edgeryders.edgesense.spazidigitali.com/

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Good luck!

And once more: it was really impressive to see the community come together and become visible online! It sure put Bucharest on my map :slight_smile:

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Wow super beautiful visualisation! “All fists held tight” for Edgeryders, I think it is a great approach for Bucharest.  :)

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Great question

@Atzu, you ask a great question. Is the bid book visible online? Or did they made it secret?

Nope

None of the cities posted their bidbooks online, if I’m not mistaken… most likely for fear of competition. Cluj for example did post a sketch of the concept online a while back, but brief. I read that all bidbooks will be posted on the Ministry’s website here: http://capitalaculturala.ro/ (currently down).

@trythis, @Atzu, thanks for the encouragement guys! The concept of InVisible City has to do with unlocking the city’s hidden potential, and is inspired from Italian novel Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino. I’m sure we’ll all be able to read it anytime now, right @Ela_Mea @Iris_Equinox @anca_ionita? By the way, Atzu do you still want to write your thesis on ECOCs? These 3 are some of the people to talk to.

Thesis

@Noemi yes I am actually, need to find a subject soon, ideally before the end of the month, and now I was slightly unsure if things would still be happening now that the bidding is sort of “pending”… I will message them, thank you for the tip!

Link to all bidbooks

Here's where all docs are uploaded… Mentions of Futurespotters are in pages 42-43 and 60-61 (the English version).