Another city development interview – how I think creative hubs can be created // Dagbladet Holstebro

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A couple of weeks ago I was interviewed again in connections with a city development theme, this time by Dagbladet Holstebro - a regional newspaper from the city of Holstebro, a provincial city a couple of hundred kilometers south of Aalborg.

There they are dealing with an abandoned meat packing complex in the middle of the city and are currently discussing strategies for making it into a creative hub of some sort.
So they gave me a call because of my work with the Platform4 project, and as always I am more than happy to share the experiences we made ourselves over the last 4.5 years shaping the project. In general I feel really proud and humbled whenever newspapers, tv, radio - or city planners - feel that I can provide inspiration for their audience and projects, respectively.

As always I highlighted what I think is one of the most important aspects when trying to pinpoint the reason for the large amount of success Platform4 has enjoyed over the years; namely how the financial funders (Aalborg Municipality and Aalborg University) gave the executive working group of grassroots entrepreneurs - the group I was lucky to be part of - almost entirely free hands in shaping the project, thereby paving the way for the creation of something authentic, something rooted in the energy of the city, something in tune with local creative communities. A bold move with a large amount of risk for the funding parties, but also a move of confidence that paid back in the sense that it encouraged us to throw ourselves relentlessly into an insane work frenzy to create the space we had always hoped for.

My point is therefore that this is the kind of dedication you often get, I believe, by showing confidence in the up-and-coming grassroots entrepreneurs of a city. Read the interview here (pdf), Danish only.

Additionally, there is a small segment in the online version of the paper, too (also Danish).

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