Culture for all, everywhere - Culture Couch concept
Culture for all, everywhere - Culture Couch concept
Culture CoucH
culture, co-creation, citizens' involvement, service design, teamwork, UI design | January - June 2022
The Task:
Kulturdistriktet, an association based in Copenhagen, facilitates a collaborative framework involving cultural actors, institutions, volunteers, and urban developers. Their key initiative, Åben Festival, unites these groups annually to engage residents with a diverse cultural landscape. To ensure year-round cultural engagement - and not only during the festival - we developed a service concept that expands space for cultural actors through community-led action, allowing more cultural initiatives.
Åben Festival. Photo by KulturDistriktet.
Some of the images from the cultural probe.
My approach:
The project began with comprehensive desk research, aiming to analyze and understand the potential of service design in supporting cultural development in urban settings. To gain deeper insights into the implementation of cultural development, we conducted three expert interviews with specialists in this field. As a research group, our investigation centred around the following inquiries:
What precisely constitutes culture?
How does one approach the evaluation and measurement of culture?
Can culture be intentionally created? If so, what are the methods?
How can we ensure a democratic cultural offering for citizens?
To address the first question, we conducted a 10-day Cultural Probe involving diverse target groups. This initiative sought to understand the locals' perspectives on culture by exploring their daily activities, their definition of cultural practices, and the locations they frequented for cultural engagement.
Based on our comprehensive research findings and identification of recurring patterns, we proceeded to develop two initial concepts that warranted testing to inform an insights-driven decision-making process.
To facilitate this evaluation, we crafted low-fidelity mockups for each concept and conducted a live intervention in Copenhagen to gather feedback. Through this testing phase, we assessed the strengths and weaknesses of both concepts, enabling us to refine and enhance the concept that best aligns with the needs of the respondents.
Subsequently, we organized two focus groups to thoroughly review the merits and shortcomings of the chosen concept. This allowed us to incorporate the invaluable perspective of the target group into the service's development process, ensuring a user-centric approach.
Solution:
The resulting service offering, Culture Couch, creates an inclusive cultural framework for citizens. It functions as a multi-sided digital platform that connects cultural actors with hosts willing to contribute physical space for cultural initiatives. Culture Couch embraces a broad view of culture, extending beyond performing and fine arts to encompass the interactions and intersections of people and ideas. Consequently, the platform covers diverse activities such as shared meals, board game nights, and book clubs. Cultural actors and hosts mutually share any income generated from these cultural initiatives. At the same time, Kulturdistriktet, as the platform operator, retains a modest commission to verify cultural initiatives and facilitate platform growth. The Culture Couch solution was developed to expand the availability of spaces dedicated to cultural initiatives. This expansion of venues will benefit all stakeholders within the ecosystem, including hosts, participants, cultural actors, and the association itself. By establishing equitable terms, cultural actors and hosts can collaboratively create sustainable, value-driven experiences for the residents of Copenhagen. When cultural actors and venue owners are fairly compensated, participants also reap the rewards through exceptional cultural experiences.
See the concept below.
Perspective of the host - screens.
Perspective of the Cultural Actor - screens.
Perspective of the citizen - screens.