GCDN Annual Convening – Lugano 2022

The last two years have seen unprecedented changes in our experience of our cities and our understanding of our communities. Global outrage following the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery in the US has brought urgent issues of cultural and racial equity to the fore. The longer-term impacts of Covid 19 and growing pressure for bold action on climate change are challenging previously unquestionable concepts such as “downtown”, and patterns of behaviour and productivity across society, and driving new interest in mor localised lives centred around resurgent town centres and neighbourhoods.

What is the role of cultural districts and organisations in these big transitions? How do urban and cultural leaders rethink their models and approaches, and how can we build the capacity to keep rethinking, given endpoints can be far from clear? What unexpected opportunities have emerged?
In this session, we’ll gather a diverse set of urban practitioners to understand what practical approaches they are using to build resilience and innovation into their own work, and that of their organisations and networks, to support evolution.

Part of what GCDN hopes to deliver for members is a genuine peer-to-peer network where everyone may feel comfortable sharing successes, learnings, and honest feedback on opportunities and challenges.

Several new members have joined the network over the past convening-less three years. Although we’ve all worked to create and sustain platforms for members to engage, no online substitute compares to the convening in terms of opportunity for meeting new colleagues and exploring potential new partnerships.

This is why we made sure to include a session on the program primarily aimed at representatives from our new members who will be in Lugano – to give them the opportunity to one another, as well as other guests and attendees from within and without the network.

This will be a facilitated lightning-round discussion, starting with the prompt: “what’s keeping you up at night"

The longer-term effects of Covid 19 and growing pressures of climate change, combined with evolutions in urban life patterns, are changing the way we live, work, socialise, travel, and experience our cities. To ensure that it continues to generate value and contribute to the quality and texture of urban life going forward, the cultural infrastructure sector must take this fast-evolving context into account – and all its stakeholders, from engineers to designers to placemakers, must adapt accordingly. But what does that entail in practice? In this session, experts in urban design, architecture and placemaking share how their work and practices have evolved over the last few years, and discuss what it means today to build cultural infrastructure for the future.