Posts with tag Nätverkstan

Each year in the beginning of September everyone working at Nätverkstan gather to have a two-days meeting, drawing up the lines for the coming year. It can be to discuss future issues or particular questions we need more time to dig into. We have a look at the present situation, projects going on, and who is doing what, as well as just having time to talk and getting to know each other.

This year we went to Flatön, an island along the coast, to Handelsman Flink, a cute guest house just by the sea. We started of with a rattling exciting walking quiz competition and activities such as tandem-biking, crab-fishing, and knitting an art piece. Then into issues like Nätverkstan Gender Policy, present situation, and future projects 2012. Great fun with a fantastic group of people!

During two intense days at the guesthouse Slussen, placed right by the ocean side, Nätverkstan gathered all staff to discuss the coming year. In the sunny August-light, the focus was the future vision aiming for Nätverkstan the year 2020.

Two positions were explored, inspired by a method used by Cristina Ortega Nuere, University of Deusto in Bilbao. The first was to envision the catastrophe. Everything had gone wrong. Two and two we discussed things like: What happened? What were the factors leading to the catastrophe? What was missing? The second was to envision the success. Nätverkstan was the most talked about cultural organization in Europe, everything turned into to gold in our hands. What had gone so well? What were the factors leading to such a success, what had been in place? What were the success criteria?

To envision the organization in such terms, pretending it was 2020 and looking back on these two scenarios, opened an intense discussion on where the organization is now, the content, projects, economy, workload, joy and so forth. We ended with a list of conclusions of things we could see were important for the planning of activities in 2011.

We also took help of communication consultant Kent R Andersson and talked about different communication methods. Everyone ended outside on the porch in preparing a small presentation of a colleague. Intense, a lot of fun, and important!

For those of you curious of what we do at Nätverkstan, download the following pdf: this-is-nv or click on the images below.

Here we describe some thoughts and points of our activities. Gives an idea. This whole blog is about leaving traces of our activities, seminars we go to, meetings we attend, projects and workshops we run or are being part of, reflections and thoughts. Nätverkstan is based in Göteborg and work on national and international level.

A constant question for most organisations, no matter size, years in business or field of work, is how you keep an organisation vivid and with high ambitions still after years in business? How do you keep it creative and challenging? It’s a true question also for a creative organisation. How do you stimulate creativity? How do you keep challenging yourself? And how do you combine careful planning and longterm strategies with flexibility and shortterm projects? A difficulty that is true for most cultural organisations.

At Nätverkstan these questions are constantly discussed and reflected, and will be also this year as we start after summer vacation.

Read more about Nätverkstan in natverkstan.pdf.