A feature of the international design calendar since 2012, we (briefly) discussed the (hi)story of Munich Creative Business Week from the 2024 edition, and so refer you, dear reader, to our post from 2024 by way of an introduction, and will stop here only to note that the motto of the 2025 edition is: How to design a vibrant community. A motto motivated by a sensing of a widespread desire for a little more togetherness in a world increasingly defined by division and isolation, and a motto to be approached with the aid of three foci: Opening Minds, Shaping Togetherness and Inspiring Empathy, the latter a reminder that however much AI we may have, one should never forget the human in the design process and realisation. We're not just here to consume. Despite how things may currently appear.
And a 2025 motto we can't help thinking should be How to design a vibrant community?
Question marks are however an increasingly regularly overlooked, an acutely endangered, aspect of discussions and discourses in a world of definitives, a world in which everyone knows everything and never tires to shout about the fact, never tires to inform others how to do things, rather than listen to the thoughts of others. A world that if it never asks can never learn. ¿And then?
Whereby we're not saying the Munich Creative Business Week organisers don't know How to design a vibrant community, they may well do, but we would be very surprised if they had all the answers and nothing to learn.
For our part we never tire of learning, which is part of why we do this.
A learning that isn't just to be undertaken in the exhibitions, talks and workshops on offer in context of MCBW, but also that way as a decentralised event with locations spread around and across the city MCBW is a chance to get out and explore Munich, to visit areas of the city you've never been to before, didn't know existed, and while there is always the real risk of finding yourself standing in front of a locked exhibition space door that should be open, it is unquestionably one of the better ways to learn about a city, to begin to better appreciate a city. Which is why we much prefer a decentralised design week format to a centralised design week format. And a decentralisation that poses the question as to if a centralised or decentralised structure is better suited to building a responsive, durable, society , is better suited to building a vibrant community?
There's that question mark again.
In the coming days and weeks we will bring you some of our thoughts and reflections on some of those works and projects and positions experienced, some of those things we've learned, and some of our thoughts and reflections on Munich Creative Business Week 2025 as an event.......
Full details on Munich Creative Business Week 2025, and the event in general, can be found at www.mcbw.de
Resource, Research, Reset - Transformation of Sacred Spaces at DG Kunstraum Diskurs Gegenwart
And unofficially running parallel...which is very cheeky, but easily recommendable
