Boris MeggiorinIn 2023 British production companies Zinc Media and Rex TV worked for the national broadcaster BBC to produce a brand new show inspired by the historical Grand Tour in Italy. I have been hired to assist the conception and the production of the episode shot in Venice, as an author and a contributor.
https://www.bbc.com/mediacentre/2023/rob-rinder-rylan-grand-tour
In 2014 I have been invited as a guest contributor at the Turin international book fair in Italy, in the frame of the initiatives of the Marche Regional Council. The purpose of my presence was to present different regional development practices linked to culture as a vector for territorial development and in particular for the “Distretto culturale evoluto di Urbino e del Montefeltro”.
On behalf of the innovation agency Conexiones Improbables (Spain) in 2021 I gave support to their application as a member of the New European Bauhaus, the interdisciplinary platform for innovation and sustainability of the European Commission. After ensuring their spot in the partnership, I contributed to the production of a cycle of international events to define the role of cross-sectoral innovation in different sectors of the economy and the society.
DeuS is an Erasmus+ Vocational Educational Training (VET) project, coordinated by the Matera – Basilicata 2019 Foundation, that aims to co-create a European-wide learning and training approach in critical thinking and entrepreneurship to find participatory, creative, and cost-effective solutions to local challenges, by unlocking the potential of the cultural and creative sector. The project brings together relevant players from the cultural and creative sector from Austria, Denmark, Finland, Italy, Lithuania, Malta, Netherlands, Slovakia and UK.
The DeuS project is shaped around the unique Open Design School, a pillar project of Matera 2019 (Italy), European Capital of Culture. It is a design laboratory using a peer-to-peer challenged based approach, where professionals of any discipline work together and share knowledge and expertise while designing, prototyping, delivering and testing design solutions.
The Open Design School methodology goes one step further than existing design thinking processes by applying real solutions to real problems, validated by real people: it transforms applied research in the real domain. In the process, DeuS works as a “think and do tank” where professionals with different backgrounds can upskill and re-skill while responding collaboratively to current societal and economic challenges.
My role in 2021 was to support the production of 10 Living Labs, one for each partnering organization, to test and integrate the Open Design methodology in solving local challenges.
In the frame of the Deus project financed by the Erasmus+ programme of the EU, I have conceived a new format to rebrand the final conference of the project, in the shape of a pop-up radio, featuring radio shows led by each partnering organization. The event took place in 2021.
“Crafting the future” was the theme of the conference, which focused on designers’ practical knowledge. How can the specific knowledge of designers be brought forward, articulated, made visible, and be understood and used in contexts like innovation, business development and social change?
The main hosting organisation, the University of Gothenburg (Sweden), hired TILLT, the innovation agency where I was working in 2013.
As part of the team taking care of international relations, my role was to support the action conceived by TILLT to promote the networking and the reflection of the delegates from all over Europe.
During the Gala Dinner, each table had a box with everyday household materials (such as sponges, tape, thread…) and the delegates sitting at the same table were asked to create, during the meal, a collaborative sculpture by using the objects provided and by representing their common feature.
In a night that was dedicated to the hybrid nature of each human, it was the perfect scheme to make the designers engage in a conversation about commonalities and roots.
In 2014, I was working at SAMOA, an Agency for urban regeneration on the Isle of Nantes (France). My colleague, Hélène Morteau, was finalising her PhD study on creative clusters and urban redevelopment while we were involved in the European Creative Industries Alliance. Among the tasks to perform, we had to exchange good practices and share the knowledge we were producing with our partners beyond the European continent.
We got in touch with the University of Chicago and its Cultural Policy Center , and we discovered that they were planning to expand their network in Europe, and namely in France.
This mutual interest resulted in the organisation of the 2015 Paris Convening of the University of Chicago on Urban Cultural Projects: Research, Practice, Policy.
During this time, world renowned experts met to discuss their findings about cultural projects in the urban environment.
My role, in addition to supporting the organisation, networking, and logistic effort, was to promote the urban redevelopment project of Nantes. This was a very good opportunity to reinforce its brand development.
In 2008, I was hired by the Ministry of Culture of the Government of Catalonia (Generalitat de Catalunya). My mission was built around the participation of the Catalan government to the cross-border cooperation framed as “Euro Region Pyrenees Mediterranean”. Two regions of France and two autonomous communities of Spain were structuring their interests and needs starting from concrete projects financed by the Interreg programme of the European Union. For example, the construction of the cross-border hospital of Cerdanya, and the transnational theatre production between Perpignan and Salt.
The cultural cooperation was on the forefront of the scheme, and my role was to support the creation of the first call for Euro Regional cooperation projects in the cultural and artistic sectors.
As a member of the Catalan delegation, I was part of the permanent Commission for Culture of the Euro Region, an initiative that was instrumental in the creation of the EGTC (European grouping of territorial cooperation) that allowed the partnership to become a legal entity.
http://www.euroregio.eu/fr/espace-culture/projets-culturels
We all agree that cultural diversity is an asset, but how does it translate into practice?
In 2008, the German Commission for UNESCO organised an international working group of young officers and cultural managers to reflect on how to put into practice the Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions.
A set of meetings took place in Barcelona, thanks to a partnership with the General Direction for Culture and Media of the Government of Catalonia.
My role was to support the logistics and facilitate the smooth exchange of ideas during the event. Most of the sessions were among the aforementioned professionals. The stay ended with a public event, sharing the findings of that round of reflections.
As the Head of International development at SAMOA, an Agency for urban redevelopment in Nantes, I was part of the European Creative Business Network, a network featuring prominent international partners in the field of cultural and creative industries. The aim of the network was to build the framework for the development of entrepreneurship and access to finance for SMEs all around Europe and beyond. http://ecbnetwork.eu/