Creative Bureaucracy

Can bureaucracies be creative?
If so, how can creative bureaucracies drive positive change in cities?

What are the best practices in nurturing more creative, more participative, and more openly led bureaucracies in Europe? (ISIG, Italy)

Where is local democracy headed in the EU? (Naďa Kurilova, Dobry úradník, MV SR)

How can we use creative and design tools to drive change in local bureaucracies? (FF MUNI)

Creative Bureaucracy is a training programme and professional growth programme for public workers. Its goal is to foment creativity in local bureaucracies, to look for creative solutions to public services, e.g. through service and human-centred design. We see the European Capital of Culture candidacy as an opportunity to become a lab for the best creative practices in local administrations and serve as an example for other European municipalities as well. 

In 2026, we hope to showcase results of the process, running throughout 2022 – 2025, at the Democracy Festival and at international fora such as the Creative Bureaucracy Festival held annually in Berlin. 

Instituto di Sociologia Internazionale di Gorizia is a research institute that focuses on local development, citizen participation in democracies, cross-border cooperation, and social inclusion through research, planning, consultancy, and training, since 1968. the institute has wide-ranging experience with training public employees in innovative policy-making, including participative tools and leadership development.

Naďa Kurilova is the Department for Local and Regional Administration and International Relations at the Ministry of Interior of the Slovak Republic, and an activist at The GoodBureaucrat, a grass-root initiative of active bureaucrats who seek to bring innovation intostate, regional and local administrations.

The Department of Information and Library Studies (TBC) at the Faculty of Arts at the Masaryk University in Brno with its dedicated research and facilitation group focusing on service design, looks at how design can occasion better policy-making and public services.