Making the City Playable Conference

by Startacus Admin

Have you heard of the Playable City award?

It’s an amazing annual Bristol-based competition which challenges artists and creatives from around the world to propose new ways for people to engage with the open and public spaces of the city.

The whole concept is based around playfulness and injecting novelty, fun and intrigue back into the urban spaces around us, as a counterpoint to the ever-growing sense of isolation which seems to come from increasingly technology focused cities.

The Playable City Award finds itself at the forefront of what has now become a global movement of thinkers, makers, planners and civil disobedients engaged in the attempt to make the cities of the world more playable, interesting and inspiring places to be.

(Luckily we’ve been keeping an eye on Playable City since it began and you can check out all of our features / interviews / analysis right here.)

Making the City Playable Conference

In acknowledgement of this world-leading approach to urban interaction, on 10 and 11 September 2014, Bristol will play host to the “Making the City Playable Conference” an event aimed at exploring the playable potential of cities and how to ensure that future cities are places where serendipity, hospitality and openness are key.

Over the course of the 2 day conference, attendees will be able to engage in playful interactions, plenty of networking, lively debates, artists commisions - as well as the much awaited and anticipated launch of this years Playable City winner ‘Shadowing’

Speakers who will be sharing their thoughts include architect, artist and Umbrellium founder Usman Haque, the Director of Google’s Creative Lab Tom Uglow and the makers of the inaugural Playable City award-winning project 'Hello Lamp Post', alongside an academic strand convened by the Digital Cultures Research Centre at UWE.

How can you get involved?

Sadly the conference is now sold out, darn! But you will be able to tune into the proceedings via the Conference website http://www.watershed.co.uk/playablecity/conference14/watch-live/ and the organisers are encouraging as many people as possible to get involved with the dicussion on twitter using #PlayableCity

If you fancy tuning in for any of the talks / events, a rundown of the programme can be found here.

• #bristol
• #playable city
• #making the city playable
• #conference

Published on: 9th September 2014