Tunis + Culture Workshop Results

On October 10^th 2015, CITY//CHANGEMAKER held its second urban innovation workshop in Dar Lasram in Tunis, a 19^th century palace today home to the Association of the Safeguard of the Medina. On the agenda was culture as an urban challenge within the context of the old Medina, a UNESCO World Heritage site once boasting with energy, today facing cultural, economic and social decline.

25 young entrepreneurs, creatives, community leaders, and other changemakers joined us on the day to take a deep-dive in the challenge and reflect on:

“How might we leverage culture and innovation to reinvent the Medina of Tunis as a thriving and enjoyable place to live, work and visit?”

Participants were guided through a structured innovation process inspired by the Creation Flow developed by the THNK: School for Creative Leadership . From connecting, to finding inspiration, to ideating around the challenge question and finally to the pitches, we shared a great time one the day:

The workshop kicked-off with an introduction, followed by a presentation by Leila Ben Gacem, a socio-cultural opportunities designer and social entrepreneur who recently converted a 17^th century house in the Medina into Dar Ben Gacem, a beautifully designed and cozy guesthouse. Leila took us through her entrepreneurial journey highlighting the Medina-specific challenges she faced from legal difficulties around deeds and inheritance, to complications around logistic and transport, to declining infrastructure, and more. She also highlighted potential opportunities and invited participants to embrace the creative process to to unlock the fantastic potential of the Medina.

This initial presentation set the tone for an initial brainstorming where participants dove to explore the challenges and opportunities in three parallel sessions focused on “living”, “working” and “visiting” the Medina. This was followed by a wild safari where teams of two to four people took off to the street to observe, interview “users” and harvest user insights.

In the second half of the workshop, the teams reframed the “creative question” to make it more specific and more focused on a user-need. Then, they were led on a journey through a series of creative exercises to help them ideate and craft innovative concepts which were pitched at the end of the workshop. Some of these exercises included:

CREATIVE QUESTION helps teams formulate a specific challenge.

FUTURE SCRIPTING invites teams to envision “success” as one would want it to be featured on the cover of Time magazine 5 years from now.

TECHNOLOGY CARDS helps teams explore possible technologies that would enrich their concepts.

MAPPING helps teams draw scenarios an visualize them at city scale (with Lego, toys, photo collages, drawings…etc).

BUSINESS MODEL CANVAS helps teams quickly think about the business model associated with their concepts.

The pitches featured a diversity of concepts ranging from creating a new label to certify genuine goods and services of the Medina; to a world-class creative hub that would make the Medina a global hotspot for Art, Design and Technology; to number of platforms enabling better connections and experiences of the Medina. Interestingly, all the concept presented an opportunity for linkages and merger into one single concept which CITY//CHANGEMAKER is currently evaluating for a potential pilot.