Kopfstand 09 – A Linz09 Event
Martin Heller, Franco Bianchini
Franco Bianchini on
"Cultural Planning & Urban Development"
In his lecture Bianchini covered an exhaustive range of issues, from the changes in cities and the urban sprawl of overcrowded areas to the self-evident standardisation of city centres. As further trends he presented, among others, the growth in immigrants in the inner city and the related absence of intercultural civic identity, the altered lifestyles of inhabitants of cities as well as the enormous and hardly manageable flood of information in cities. Franco Bianchini sees the most important approach to the work of cultural planning and urban development as the holistic, interdisciplinary, innovation orientated and shared work of cities and their inhabitants. At the same time he emphasised the documenting of local specialties and the mobilisation of local and cultural resources like art institutions, media activities, (im-)material heritage and many more as essential requirements of a cultural and progressive development in cities.
Franco Bianchini is one of the leading experts and advisors on urban and cultural development questions and their concrete effects in connection with cultural policy in Europe. Together with the city of Liverpool he developed the concept of “Cities on the Edge”. Currently he manages the international Cultural Planning and Policy Unit (ICPPU) at De Montfort University in Leicester. Alongside his activities as advisor and researcher for various organisations, such as the European Council and the European Commission, he works internationally as a lecturer in Cultural Planning. He gives lectures on cultural and political issues across the whole of Europe as well as in Japan, China, Columbia and Australia. From October 2007 he will take over professorship for Cultural Policy and Planning at Leeds Metropolitan University in the UK.
The format for the event HEADSTAND 09 was begun in spring 2006 by Linz09 and, in September, has already taken place for the seventh time. Issues and experiences from the most varied European contexts, meaningful for Linz09 in view of the cultural capital year, are introduced within the framework of lectures and discussions.
Hellena Harttung, CEO of Bremer Atelier Blaumeier, UIrike Hauffe, Bremen regional representative for women, Elvira Tomancok, women’s representative for the city of Linz, Michael Schwarzinger, former Austrian ambassador to Lithuania, Hubert von Goisern as well as Christa Prets, delegate to the EU-Parliament and coordinator of the cultural and education committee have already lectured at HEADSTAND 09.
