CREATIVE BUREAUCRACY
Building a Permanent Institution for Public Innovation
Public institutions shape our everyday lives.
Yet they rarely have places where they can imagine, prototype and test new ways of working.
Creative Bureaucracy was born to change this.For years, the Creative Bureaucracy Festival has brought together the world's most inspiring public innovators.
Now, a new chapter begins. Not instead of the Festival. Because of the Festival.
A permanent international institution. Open every day. Dedicated to Creativity in Public Administration.
Why?
For more than forty-five years, Charles Landry has helped redefine how we think about cities, culture and public life. The Falling Walls Foundation has created one of the world's leading international platforms for innovation and ideas. Farm Cultural Park has demonstrated that culture can transform places, communities and public imagination. Today these three stories have the opportunity to become one.Not simply by organising another event. But by creating a permanent institution capable of connecting ideas, places and public action.
The Opportunity
Every institution begins with an act of imagination.This one begins with an act of Creative Bureaucracy. The Italian Agenzia del Demanio has made possible something extraordinary: transforming one of Palermo's most important historic public buildings into a temporary international laboratory. This is much more than the reuse of a building. It is a demonstration that public administration itself can become creative, visionary and transformative. The Institution is therefore not only about Creative Bureaucracy.
It is born from an act of Creative Bureaucracy.
A new kind of Institution
Not a think tank.
Not a museum.
Not a training centre.
Not another conference.
A living public laboratory.
A place where municipalities, public administrations, universities, artists, designers, researchers and citizens work together to rethink how public institutions can become more creative, open and collaborative.
A place where ideas stop being theories.
And become practice.
Why Palermo?
Because great ideas need places where they can be tested. Sicily is one of Europe's most complex and fascinating territories: rich in history, culture and human capital, yet constantly challenged to imagine new public futures. Palermo has become an international laboratory of cultural regeneration. Here, creativity is not an abstract concept. It is already changing the way institutions, communities and places interact. This makes Sicily not simply the host of the project, but its first experiment.
WHAT WE DOBuilding the world's first public laboratory where institutions themselves become experimental.
A place where cities, governments, universities, artists, designers and citizens work together to imagine, prototype and test new ways of serving the public good.
Public ExperimentationWorking alongside municipalities and public administrations to imagine, prototype and test new approaches to public challenges.
Municipal Innovation LabSupporting cities in designing more creative public services, policies and governance.
Creative Bureaucracy ClinicReal challenges. Real institutions. Real solutions.
Public Servants in ResidenceMayors, civil servants, designers, artists and researchers working together for weeks—not hours.
FIRST YEAR
Launching the vision in Palermo during World Cities Day
October 31
PALERMO
A delegation of Italian mayors, public servants, researchers and innovators joins the Creative Bureaucracy Festival in Berlin, presenting the first outcomes of the Italian experiment and strengthening international collaborations.
June 2-3
Berlin
Opening the temporary international headquarters in Palermo.
June 26
Palermo