Sil­ver lin­ing: Suc­cess­ful trans­for­ma­tion process for the 10th MCBW

This year saw the tenth anniver­sary of the annu­al­ly held Munich Cre­ative Busi­ness Week (MCBW), the largest event of its kind in Ger­many. Almost all the events took place dig­i­tal­ly or in a hybrid man­ner. Over the course of nine days, the vir­tu­al design week broke the con­straints of geog­ra­phy and time with its new­ly devel­oped dig­i­tal “space” and estab­lished entire­ly new for­mats. Around 35,000 vis­i­tors at over 120 dig­i­tal and hybrid work­shops, con­fer­ences, sym­posia, webi­na­rs, exhi­bi­tions and streams — that’s the pre­lim­i­nary tal­ly. The MCBW is thus an exem­plary bright spot in the Coro­na pan­dem­ic and once again demon­strates the impor­tance and radi­ance of the cre­ative and cul­tur­al industries.MCBW proved to be an exem­plary bea­con dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, empha­siz­ing once again the rel­e­vance and radi­ance of the cre­ative and cul­tur­al sectors.

Matthias Horx: Design­ers as agents of future design

In line with the theme of this year’s MCBW, Shap­ing futures by Design, dur­ing the dig­i­tal MCBW recep­tion broad­cast from BMW Welt, futur­ol­o­gist and founder of Zukun­ftsin­sti­tut Matthias Horx dis­cussed the ret­ro­grade view on the future in the form of a “reg­no­sis.” He said: “It can be help­ful if we jump into tomor­row men­tal­ly and ask our­selves ret­ro­spec­tive­ly how we got there. The reg­no­sis enables us to enter into a pro­duc­tive rela­tion­ship with the future. In this sce­nario, design­ers assume the impor­tant role of agents by escort­ing soci­ety and the indus­tri­al sec­tor on their journeys.”

10 years of MCBW: a suc­cess­ful trans­for­ma­tion process

While MCBW typ­i­cal­ly takes place with­in Munich’s bor­ders and in the MCBW part­ner region of Land­shut, for its tenth anniver­sary this year it found­ed a vir­tu­al plat­form that will be con­tin­ued, at least in part, going for­ward. “Per­son­al encoun­ters and net­work­ing local­ly are the essence of MCBW and our indus­try, how­ev­er, the con­nec­tion between the ana­log and the dig­i­tal has enriched our lives and will con­tin­ue to do so in the future. For exam­ple, it allows us to extend our com­mu­ni­ty at the nation­al and inter­na­tion­al lev­els and to cre­ate a new form of con­nec­tiv­i­ty. In addi­tion, by com­bin­ing dig­i­tal and ana­log we can devel­op new for­mats with even greater added val­ue,” says Lisa Braun, Direc­tor of MCBW.

New for­mats: dig­i­tal and ana­log connected

An exam­ple of a suc­cess­ful new for­mat was the DESIGN­WALK which was well-received and earned a great deal of pos­i­tive feed­back. The tour led vis­i­tors to sev­er­al ana­log sta­tions through­out Munich’s Kun­stare­al area includ­ing the DIS CON­NECT­ED video instal­la­tion and the MCBW POP UP exhi­bi­tion con­tain­er. The QR code at each sta­tion pro­vid­ed dig­i­tal back­ground infor­ma­tion includ­ing inter­views. Vis­i­tors were able to embark on this urban tour at any time dur­ing the nine days with­out hav­ing to reg­is­ter – all they need­ed was a smart­phone. Jan Kuck’s inter­ac­tive light instal­la­tion and the video per­for­mances by Miro Crae­mer at West­park also made impres­sive exam­ples of the con­nec­tion between the ana­log and the dig­i­tal. At timematters.art fans of art, fam­i­lies, and walk­ers had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to send in their pre­ferred respons­es to the ques­tion “What would you change?” and have their entries pro­ject­ed onto the water screen on site. How­ev­er, the diverse dig­i­tal con­fer­ences, work­shops, and live streams on the MCBW web­site record­ed the lion’s share of visitors.

MCBW’s val­ue for soci­ety and the economy

Hubert Aiwanger, Bavar­i­an State Min­is­ter of Eco­nom­ic Affairs, Region­al Devel­op­ment and Ener­gy, empha­sized: “MCBW is an essen­tial sil­ver lin­ing for the cul­tur­al and cre­ative sec­tors. The over­whelm­ing accep­tance of the many dig­i­tal for­mats makes me opti­mistic for the future. In par­tic­u­lar, the large band­width of top­ics shows how impor­tant the indus­try is to the mas­ter­ing of the wide array of chal­lenges cur­rent­ly being faced. I am very hap­py the Min­istry of Eco­nom­ic Affairs sup­ports this indus­try event every year!” At 20.3 bn euros in gross val­ue added, the share of the cre­ative and cul­tur­al sec­tors in the val­ue cre­ation of the state of Bavaria amount­ed to 3.6 per­cent mak­ing it the sec­tor with the third high­est con­tri­bu­tion among those ref­er­enced after the auto­mo­tive sec­tor with 7.9 per­cent and the health­care sec­tor with 7.7 percent.

Save the Date: The next MCBW will take place from March 5–13, 2022.