Silicon Vilstal Experience Festival
Basic information
Project Title
Full project title
Category
Project Description
The annual “Silicon Vilstal Experience Festival” is a major social innovation event in rural Europe. It provides a unique mix of heritage, arts, culture and innovation, enables creators of all kinds and serves as a launchpad for ideas and projects. It is possible thanks to the joint efforts of many creatives, designers, architects, volunteers and a broad societal network of local companies, municipalities, government institutions, foundations, civic organisations and museums.
Project Region
EU Programme or fund
Which funds
Other Funds
The Silicon Vilstal Experience Festival has been selected as a "European Social Economy Regions" Event in 2019 and 2020.
Description of the project
Summary
Our annual “Silicon Vilstal Experience Festival” is a major social innovation event in rural Europe. The Festival provides a unique mix of heritage, arts, culture and innovation, enables creators of all kinds and serves as a launchpad for ideas and projects. It is possible thanks to the joint efforts of many creatives, designers, architects, volunteers and a broad societal network of local companies, municipalities, government institutions, foundations, civic organisations and museums. Silicon Vilstal Experience Festival has been selected as an “European Social Economy Region” event by the EU commission for the third year in a row. The festival is embedded in our open social innovation activities. They focus on playfully creating a rural ecosystem for creativity by fostering the spirit of cooperation and looking more closely at the opportunities and challenges of the region. The festival started in 2016 with a focus on design processes, digitisation and STEM education. It has quickly gained awareness among creatives from urban areas and has grown ever since. Also, the nature of the Festival has grown significantly by learning from past experiences. In the following years, cultural offerings, sustainable economy, mobility and regional development played an increasingly important role. One constant is that the Festival assembles people from urban and rural areas on a par - in an authentic, relaxed and inspiring setting. Silicon Vilstal organises three other formats throughout the year which are integrated in the Festival. The formats had all been prototyped and tested during our festivals, before scaling them up and enhancing underlying concepts and processes. The ”Ideas Workshop” offers creative STEM workshops for children, adolescents and adults. ”Farmer seeks start-up” is a non-sector-specific start-up support programme which facilitates coaching, rooms to work and live and reality tests. The ”Creative Space” enables pop-up projects with artists and creatives.
Key objectives for sustainability
Sustainable development and the SDGs have become an integral part of the festival concept and the programme elements over the years. Sustainability aspects had been included in the first edition via the intention of strengthening urban-rural exchange, extracurricular education and leveraging existing resources of all kinds. The Festival has introduced the concept of social entrepreneurship in our region and has become a European Social Economy Regions Event, while Silicon Vilstal also has joined the German Social Entrepreneurship Association (SEND e.V.). Our main pillars of sustainability are the use of existing infrastructure, buildings and resources, the focus on regional and local production and a sustainable mobility network during the festival. Our “Virtual Makerspace” approach leverages the available production resources of local enterprises. Since several years, the festival is located on the premises of the Bavarian Centre for Traditional Costumes. It is a converted historic parish economy which existed for hundreds of years. The Bavarian Association for Traditional Costumes revitalized the area and repurposed it with a museum, conference rooms, accommodation, a bar parlour etc. We turn this historic location into a vibrant festival campus, in particular by adding onsite pop-up locations like a tiny house village and connecting satellite events like the opening of a novel innovation campus or an exhibition about local leather manufacturing tradition. During the festival, we establish a sustainable intermodal mobility network with e-shuttles, bike trails, buses and train rides, all for free. We make regional production tangible, e.g. by connecting the festival to a regional food market, using an ancient bread-baking oven on the premises for live baking and by integrating local food producers, novel local food startups and local energy producers.
Key objectives for aesthetics and quality
Aesthetics and a unique “edutainment” experience with maker spirit are instrumental for our purpose of social innovation. The four core elements are brand, location, content and people, always balancing rural heritage and innovation. The consistent brand identity of the Silicon Vilstal initiative combines authentic rural visuals and minimalistic design. Posters, communication materials, motto shirts, online channels etc. all use this brand. Our Festival has a different motto and corresponding key visual each year, starting with “MOO” in 2019, followed by “Future@home” in 2020 and “Social Game” in 2021. Secondly, we curate and shape the locations, playing with heritage and modern elements. E.g., we organized a tiny house pop-up village at our festival campus at the historical Bavarian Centre for Traditional Costumes, with tiny houses on wheels from across Europe. We used old barns for upcycling artworks exhibitions and village inns for design lectures etc. The edutainment content of our festival offers participatory design workshops on furniture (e.g. from Enzo Mari, Social furniture by EOOS), products, rural mobility and architecture (e.g. onsite prototyping of vacant buildings as fashion stores or innovation labs). Creative methods like design thinking or graphic recording are teached to the visitors. Pop-up Makerspaces leverage the existing facilities and production resources of local enterprises, we offer creative STEM workshops with robotics, metalwork, 3D printing, laser cutting etc. Finally, the unique interdisciplinary blend of people is a core part of the “Silicon Vilstal experience”. People from our rural area (partly in traditional costumes), urban designers, digital experts, traditional musicians, digital startups, international guests e.g. from Europe, Africa or Asia, they all mingle in a special rural-creative atmosphere. In particular, the festival is an event for & with startups, that participate in our founders programme “Farmer seek startup”.
Key objectives for inclusion
Our key objective is to foster social innovation and to make opportunities of rural areas tangible. The aspiration of our festival has always been to make “trialable” offers and reach out to the general public in a very inclusive way - with creative workshops, performances and reality pilot projects both for children and adults. Most existing conferences, fairs or festivals either show theoretical topics, static objects or provide entertainment, all of them focused on narrow target groups. We foster social innovation by a participatory “trialable” edutainment approach. At the festival, the public and experts as well as rural and urban people meet and interact on eye level. We see this as an important distinctive feature, both in our regional context and on an European scale.
In the beginning, we had the larger scope of rural inclusion, i.e. to show, that rural areas have the same innovation capabilities as urban centers. After being selected as a “European Social Economy Regions” Event by the EU commission, we looked more thoroughly at several aspects of inclusion. E.g., we introduced various for-free offerings at the festival. We provide direct shuttle services from retirement homes to the festival campus and supported the digitisation of an all-year shuttle service for elderly. We collaborated with refugee organisations to extend refugee children participation in our STEM workshops and joined a regional STEM cluster initiative with a particular focus on inclusiveness.
Our festival campus is located remotely in the countryside. This contributes to the specific atmosphere of the festival, but this is also a large drawback with respect to inclusion aspects. There is no substantial public transport and a lack of cycling infrastructure to the closest railway stations. Therefore, the festival offers the above-mentioned intermodal mobility network. We want to raise awareness for this rural inclusion issue and show possible solutions with a playful “trialable” approac
Results in relation to category
The distinctive mix of topics, activities, and participants creates an inspiring atmosphere. The impact of our festival grows year on year. After the inaugural festival in 2016, we added pre-festival pilot projects in 2017 and turned the festival into a living lab. This means, we started innovation projects with startups and local partners upfront, e.g. in the field of rural mobility. The outcomes could then be test tried at the festival. 2018 we also added the role of “innovation launchpad” to the festival, i.e. we initiated projects at the festival.
By leveraging arts and cultural heritage, we offer easier and playful ways towards innovation and design. Even more, we strengthen the self-confidence and social cohesion of our rural community. Examples of formats are a workshop blending modern fashion design with traditional costumes, introduction into digital self-publishing with the example of a book about the countryside, a cross-over concert with mediaeval chants and saxophone improvisations in a medieval church, digital literature soundwalks, upcycling workshops related to leather craftmanship tradition, a workshop “our village of the future” for kids, a lecture “Old wisdom and the future of work” etc.
Silicon Vilstal got widespread acknowledgment for its arts & culture enabled social innovation approach. We have been selected by the state of Bavaria as representative at THEARTS+ (the international “Future of Culture” festival of Frankfurt Book Fair) and have been invited by the German Federal Ministry of Agriculture to the International Green Week. We are a regional partner of Germany’s largest design event, Munich Creative Business Week. Our Rural Design Days, a global gathering of creators and rural shapers, was recommended by Dezeen. Our cultural work has been awarded by the German state minister of culture and media, the cultural funds of the state of Bavaria, the cultural funds of the district of Lower Bavaria and several other foundations.
How Citizens benefit
A key element of our festivals is about strengthening rural village centres. We did many “creating places” workshops with citizens, architects and designers, partly in vacant buildings. This generated ideas for buildings, that later on have been revitalized. Even more, we used the festival in 2020 as the launchpad for our “Village Center 2.0” project. During the festival, we showcased potential future functions of village centers by organizing Bavarias first rural coworking meetup, by a fashion pop-up store in a vacant building and with a landscape architecture concept, that was inspired by Singapore`s “Garden City”. Citizens could contribute their thoughts during an ideas fair. After the festival, we joined forces with a local municipality and now start a one-year pilot phase, with social coworking, pop-up stores, cultural events etc. After that pilot phase, we will generate a “Village Center 2.0” blueprint, that can be reused by villages across Europe.
Since the beginning, we offer STEAM workshops to kids during the festival (STEM = sience, technology, engineering, mathematics, STEAM adds arts). Meanwhile, we turned this into a continuous programme with monthly workshops and got STEM partner of the German federal ministry of education and of a regional STEM education cluster.
In addition, our “Farmer seeks startup” founders programme has led to manifold learning effects on both sides through the interaction between startup teams, rural hosts, local project partners and the general public.
Bringing together a diverse mix of participants generates many intangible effects. The festival playfully encourages a “maker spirit”. Among the participants, and even more the volunteers, that organize the festival, we often perceive an increased openness towards innovation and becoming more active in shaping one`s region. In many cases, festival volunteers turned into team members of our initiative and manage social projects also during the year.
Innovative character
Society needs a broad social innovation process to tackle the current and upcoming large-scale economic and digital transformations. Our playful “grassroots” social innovation approach is unique. It leverages a whole region with its population and cultural heritage as a living lab for social innovation. It encourages the inhabitants being a driving force for innovation, while integrating municipalities, state institutions, organisations and companies in many ways. The annual festival is like the drum beat of our continuous work. Our motto “home to new ideas” summarizes the innovative character of our festival and our whole initiative. Our approach is characterised by an efficient use of existing resources, low-threshold activities and by integrating arts and culture in many ways, in particular by connecting cultural heritage with digitisation and technology. These factors contribute to a unique atmosphere, extending the common notion of cultural activities and making arts and culture the enablers of innovation. All participants with their diverse backgrounds meet one another at eye level. We see a high demand for such gatherings, especially, the component of urban-rural exchange is important for us. In addition, there is even in the narrow region often a lack of interaction between inhabitants of villages, small towns and cities. By the living lab approach, and the inclusion of a broad network, the festival reconnects the rural civil society among each other and with their region.
The Aftermovie of the Experience Festival 2020 can be seen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycoDrnl9lZs
