Place Making Workshop: training and local activation

Place Making, the international workshop in local marketing and planning, was held in Lecce from 26 to 27 Septembr 2012. It was organised by BAM! as part of  Artlab12, in partnership with Noema Culture & Place Mapping and with the sponsorship of the Ministry for Economic Development and the Regione Puglia.

Artlab, Italy’s most important cultural management event, had never taken such a detailed look at the different approaches involved in the relationship between place branding and urban planning, two topics that are becoming more and more relevant on an international level.

Lia Ghilardi, director of Noema, led the first day, focusing on local mapping and cultural planning, with a practical approach to exploring the values of the local area in order to convey the city brand. Meanwhile, the second day was all about local planning: Oriol Nel•lo, lecturer in Urban Geography at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, illustrated the variables linked to local policy and explored the subject of local brand construction with a more organic approach compared to the fabric of local identities; Paolo Castelnovi completed the training with a session called Mapping Distinctiveness on mapping the specific features of the landscape and presenting case studies from the Connecting SmartCities project.

BAM! had a twofold role: it planned the workshop, structuring the sessions and selecting the partners for building the initiative, as well as looking after the practical organisation of the workshops, handling logistical matters for the speakers, identity building and communication, and acting as organisational secretary.