Kosice 2.0 Journal 1: Hitting the ground running

Kosice 2.0 enjoys today strong political support by the leadership of the City government. The prestigious character of the program as well the acknowledged and reliable public organization CIKE that is responsible for the project management and delivers on time ensure equilibrium in the leadership of the project. Local elections that are on the way this season do not put pressure to Kosice 2.0.

Kosice 2.0 is moving forward with confidence as it enjoys strong political support by the leadership of the City government. City of Kosice leads the project by bearing the overall supervision of the implementation with a Vice Mayor and the Head of the Strategic Department onboard. Two City-owned spin-off companies, legacies of the European Capital of Culture, are carrying the load of the project management and program’s leadership. Creative Industry Kosice (CIKE), expert in the field of the Creative and Cultural Industries (CCIs) is responsible for the management and coordination of the partnership as well as for the development of the major deliverable CXI that is positioned within its corporate structure and its sibling, K13, is responsible for the management of the infrastructure, co-working spaces, venues, events undertaking most of project’s public procurement processes. One higher education and research public institute, Technical University of Kosice is active in the educational program and supports M&E and research at CXI. One community organization, East Coast, undertakes the engagement activities of the Mobile Urban Lab and runs participatory workshops and community events bringing citizens and communities closer to the project. Kosice IT Valley, the association of IT companies and important stakeholder of the economic transformation of the region, with 53 members such as Deutsche Telecom, Siemens but also municipalities of Kosice and Presov, Kosice self-governing region and Technical University, supports with its network the development of the open data platform and the implementation of hackathons. One major innovation hub with international activity, Civitta Slovakia leads the urban innovation accelerator program while 2 private companies provide support with IT and digital solutions for the implementation of major deliverables.

An acknowledged and reliable project leadership
Three big public partners (City of Kosice, CIKE and K13-Kosice Cultural Centres) share the program’s management responsibilities and the personal costs for the core management team. CIKE, which is responsible for the overall coordination of the day-to-day management and production of content, has been the partner that also led the design process of the project proposal and the frontrunner of the City’s cultural-led transformation plan. CIKE, as well as its sibling K13-Kosice Cultural Centres, have their own legal status and staff and are supervised by a public board led by the City of Kosice. A group of young and ambitious creative leaders and city makers manage both public organizations. Having a solid leadership model with 3 major public partners, the project enjoys today political support and local elections that are on the way this season do not seem to create pressure to the team. 

Sharing common objectives
Goals of Kosice 2.0 are aligned with the long term strategic objectives of the City to increase the diversity of the economy capitalising on the creative industry and investing in digital technologies to advance public service provision and bring efficiency to the decision making processes. All project partners support those objectives and this creates strong commitment to the project vision. Both public authorities and project partners work together for a broader vision for the city.

Political leadership next to the project
During the first year of implementation the appointed political leadership with the Vice Mayor and the Head of the Strategic Department of the municipality has been quite close to the project when it came for its most important moments but also helping connect the initiative with City services departments or facilitating the opening of the educational program for City Officials.

take away points:

• Institutionalizing best practices can become key when nurturing innovation. City of Kosice exploited the legacy of the European Capital of Culture turning its lever public company to fully functional contemporary public cultural organizations that enjoy political support while having strong experience running such a complex project 

• Diffused form of leadership is key to create commitment and motivation and hybrid public entities that acquire a sense of independence can become key in this model. Strategic vision should be clearly shared among public authorities and project partners to help create equilibrium in leadership

Public procurement for equipment and external services is quite generous in Kosice 2.0 and covers 37% of the total budget. Those funds are allocated for the upgrade of physical cultural infrastructure, the development of new innovative elements (Mobile Urban Lab and open data platform) and also to nurture opportunities for the ecosystem of start-ups with seed funding investment. While public procurement is well designed and run by experienced public entities, delays have been encountered to almost all areas without though excessing the limits.  

In Kosice 2.0 public procurement for equipment and external services is quite generous and covers 37% of the total project budget (more than 2mil. Euros). Most of the procurement load is carried by the City and its entities, CIKE and K13-Kosice Cultural Centres and consists of 3 main strands:

• The upgrade/reconstruction of physical cultural infrastructure (building spaces) that have been previously used for purely cultural purpose during the ECoC 2013 providing 4.500 sq.m to offices, co-working facility and the Urban Innovation Sphere to support the start-up ecosystem. Despite the fact that the building (part of the Culture Park creative space) was renovated for the ECoC in 2013, Kosice 2.0 allocates additional investment into further upgrade for ventilation system, electronic installation, equipment and furniture transforming the space previously used for exhibitions to a vibrant lab that hosts the Urban Innovation Sphere, co-working space for start-ups, FabLab, Audio-Visual Centre, Atelier and Community Meet-Up Space (EUR 0.6 million).

• The development of the Mobile Urban Laboratory (MUL) as an integral part of CXI and instrumental in achieving the objectives of the project (collecting data and engaging with communities). Procurement will include the car/trailer, interior custom design and equipment with extensive light and sound visual media art display, as well as with sensory technology for the purpose of data collection and mapping. (EUR 0.3 million).

• The support of entrepreneurs, artists, creative professionals and civil society organizations with micro-funding and grants through the Urban Innovation Sphere (UIS). The UIS will run 3 different grant schemes: The first is part of the Urban Innovation Accelerator program that will finance in total 3 early-stage start-ups with EUR 10.000 each (EUR 30.000 in total). The second is the Proof of Concept grant scheme that will finance 12 promising ideas per year from civil society organizations with EUR 5.000 each (EUR 180.000 in total). The third is the Open Innovation Initiative that will award 9 citizen-centric innovations focused on tech solutions with EUR 5.000 (EUR 45.000 in total) - (EUR 0.25 million)

Meticulous preparation phases
Investing in developing new innovative infrastructures such as the Mobile Urban Lab or upgrading existing ones with state of the art equipment, such as renovating the Bravo building, undertaking costs associated with physical reconstructions and specialized technical equipment could lead to sidetrack in timelines and pre-calculated costs. To mitigate those risks project partners CIKE and K13-Kosice Cultural Centres are investing in combining highly specialized staff and internal procurement managers with experts to run meticulously and accurately the process specifying scope and criteria to meet the exact needs of the procurement each time.
 

Facing delays along the way
During the first year of implementation a number of delays occurred for all the 3 strands of the procurement process. Some of those delays happened because of administrative lags, some others because of deadlocks in the process that led to change of plans, others because of pandemic context and others because a new idea was introduced to better meet the needs of the activity.

• The upgrade of the Bravo building with low energy consumption HVAC system and electrical installation has delayed for about 5 months already partly due to administrative delays, obstacles related to the pandemic as during the 1st pandemic wave, the Main building of Kasárne was one of the main regional spots for the Covid-19 testing (which was also obligatory), but also because the team decided to invest more time in the preparation process so to help end up with the appropriate solutions of service providers. Today, after a carefully designed preparation phase, service providers have been selected and the works are expected to start very soon.

• The process of furnishing and equipping the Urban Innovation Sphere and the co-working facility has also faced delays. Furnishing the co-working facility has undergone through the same route as the HVAC system with a careful preparation phase. Today the public competition has been completed and the service provider is about to be announced. The project team has not though been waiting for the new furniture to arrive and has already offered access to the new tenants to use the co-working space, which has been 100%, occupied. To overcome the problem they have used temporary solutions allowing tenants to bring their own equipment that could also share with their colleagues. A dedicated space in the basement of the building is being used to store redundant items that could be used in special circumstances. This more collaborative approach has been also the case for designing the specifications of the supportive facilities such as the FabLab, community meet up space and Atelier. Instead of planning those spaces in advance, the team decided to carefully collect the needs of the new tenants using questionnaires that helped define better specification of spaces and let the tenants acquire a sense of co-ownership. Today 80% of the equipment is expected to be installed by the end of the year (except the equipment for the FabLab facility that will take longer). Delays due to the pandemic were caused as tenants arrived later than planned.

• The Mobile Urban Lab unit has been also facing a number of delays associated with the car/trailer customization and the highly specialized equipment provision. The development of the car has delayed for 5 months already mainly because of difficulties acquiring the necessary state-of-the-art equipment. The sensory technology for the purpose of data collection and mapping has turned out to be much more complicated to acquire than planned and it turned out to be also very expensive and that has created a small deadlock as far as the vehicle is concerned. The team has though devised alternative solutions so not to slow down the activities of the MUL launching the program without the use of the car, engaging with the community in a series of participatory planning meetings that took place at the network of the community spaces SPOTS that are activated for the needs of the project. 

• The project management team had to implement minor change of plans for the Proof of Concept grant scheme program of the Urban Innovation Sphere. The grant scheme initially aimed to support citizen-centric innovations coming from civil society organizations or citizens (individuals with no corporate formal status). Due to Slovak legislative processes, the City of Kosice could not provide the grant for individuals. The team had to adapt keeping the grant scheme running for organizations from the civil society.

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  take away points:

• Devising temporary solutions to overcome delays during public procurement helps the project not loose its flow and dynamics in implementation

• Changing plans to a more participative approach to public procurement could be tested for a part of the project as this could bring co-ownership to final result

The project uses a compact and swift project management model where one public organization (CIKE) with high reputation and major experience undertakes project direction. While this has turned out to be very efficient for the implementation process and for achieving project goals and deliver on time in a challenging period, it does create pressure to a small team that carries most of the workload, responsibility and risk. A strong common vision, culture and enthusiasm among all partners of the project facilitates cohesion and consistency while important moments such as the launch of the Urban Innovation Sphere have helped to achieve cross-partnership diffuse of responsibilities/risks/rewards and add up to a more participative way of project management.

Kosice 2.0 operates with a compact and swift project management and coordination mechanism. Municipality has the role of the supervisor and supports politically helping to overcome deadlocks during the implementation while advocates for the project at a higher level. The management and project coordination (project direction) is the responsibility of its public entity, CIKE with the support of its sibling K13-Kosice Cultural Centres. All project partners are participating in the steering committee taking strategic decisions, they meet every 6 months and their role to the implementation depends on the working packages or deliverables where they lead or contribute according to the expertise they bring to the partnership.

Two experienced sibling public entities as the trustees of the project management

CIKE and K13-Kosice Cultural Centres are City organizations that draw their expertise from running major cultural initiatives for the City of Kosice being the agents of the cultural-led transformation of the city. Their reputation has grown over the years together with the range of activities they deliver and this is the reason that they lead the project management of Kosice 2.0. This compact co-management model is considered as the most effective way to reach project objectives and deliver on time for a quite complex project.

Strong common culture among partners

Managing the implementation of such a complex project where its ingredients (Institute, open data platform, mobile urban lab, advanced visualizations, art installations in public space, urban innovation accelerator, hackathons, proof of connect competitions, networking catalyst program, educational program) must communicate and be synchronized so that the overall program is well orchestrated and performs coherently is a big challenge. Besides the compact and experienced management team, the culture and vision of Kosice 2.0 are commonly shared among the different partners and entities and this facilitates the coordination process of such a complex project.

The Urban Innovation Sphere tears down the silos

With project management responsibility borne by a compact group of experienced public organizations, some of the deliverables become key to break silos within the partnership. The Urban Innovation Sphere is one of those major deliverables bringing together in action many partners together: the City of Kosice (PP1) as the trustee of the micro-grants scheme that announces the grant call, leads the jury of experts and also is the one that defines together with CIKE and CXI the challenges framework for the Proof of Concept competition; CIKE (PP2) that is mainly responsible for Hackathons program but is also active in all other areas supporting with expertise and networks; K13-Kosice Cultural Centres (PP3) is responsible for the venues preparation and for the organization of events and meetups that create linkages, and increase synergies between the UIS tenants (Networking Catalyst program); IT Valley (PP6) supports Networking Catalyst program and hackathons with expertise and network; Civitta Slovakia (PP8) is leading the overall accelerator program and is involved in hackathons and Proof of Concept contributing with its expertise.

Take away points:

• Trusting the project management responsibility to one experienced organization leads to efficient and quick implementation but adds up pressure to a small team that carries most of the workload, responsibility and risk. 

• Sustaining a common culture and vision among project partners is key to pursue coherent results in complex projects

• Specific activities or deliverables could create wonderful opportunities for tearing down the silos within a partnership and put many organizations or departments to work together

Kosice 2.0 enjoys its diverse consortium of partners that spread across the entire quadruple helix spectrum of stakeholders and perform under the coordination of an efficient project management team. This composition that has been helping the project acquire an integrated approach to implementation from the get-go is further supported by the embedded participative culture that the project owns to enable a promising cross-sectoral and co-creation approach at many levels. 

Kosice 2.0 involves 9 partners in the implementation process that spread across the entire quadruple helix spectrum of stakeholders. Next to the City of Kosice, which is the Main Urban Authority, CIKE and K13 that represent government entities, there is a higher education and research center, a community organization, 1 association and 3 private corporations. The composition of the partnership as well as project’s main objective to increase civic participation and bring closer society to government decision making processes help the project acquire a more integrated approach to the implementation where culture of co-creation happens not only for specific outputs but runs throughout the whole project.

Collaborative moments among project partners

There are many moments where a more collaborative approach to implementation is facilitated and project partners work beyond their specific responsibilities or deliverables interacting and co-defining important areas of Kosice 2.0 such as the development of the CXI where all partners are generally involved or the Urban Innovation Sphere where most partners collaborate to deliver specific activities or outputs. Another example is the M&E where CIKE leads the implementation coordinating the CXI experts/staff that have undertaken the monitoring and evaluation workload while the higher education institute TUKE is onboard supporting with expertise and knowledge supervising the process.

Participative project culture

Apart from the collaborative moments and common areas of work among project partners, a strong participative culture runs throughout the project and leads the way of the implementation process. Main objective of Kosice 2.0 is to bring together the cultural community, artists and creative entrepreneurs, the IT start-up community, entrepreneurs from traditional industries, civil society organizations and active citizens with policy makers and City government or public entities to work closer together, increase the well-being of the city, consolidate the culture-led transformation and change the mindset of public policy making. Cross sectoral collaborations have taken place already at many levels. The Urban Innovation Sphere and its different programs has been stimulating this collaborative culture and despite the difficulties posed by the pandemic, the UIS has managed to complete at least one session in all of its public programs bringing at the same place all those different stakeholders to pilot solutions that improve the quality of life in the city and advance its collective intelligence.   

Take away points:

• Involving as many and diverse partners and stakeholders from the beginning of the project has definitely helped Kosice 2.0 acquire a more participative way in the  implementation process while not losing its efficiency in delivering where it benefits from having a smaller and more compact project management team

• The program’s embedded participative culture has enabled already interesting and promising cross sectoral collaborations

M&E activity is undertaken by CXI experts and has been quite detailed and meticulously designed. The team is working with a theory of change model that lets map mid-steps to achieve the broader goals of a complicated project.

An independent expert group at CXI has undertaken the responsibility of the M&E activity having compiled its detailed methodology in a quite extensive document that has been shared and communicated to all project partners. The project management team believes that the highest credibility and objectivity of monitoring and evaluation can be achieved by the involvement of an independent evaluator while the expertise of this evaluator is of major importance for the process, but success requires certain level of independence. To help support with expertise the the M&E methodology has been also supervised by the TUKE professor which has created a small opportunity for collaboration between 2 partners around M&E.

Theory of Change model
The M&E team is using the theory of change model to better follow the process that leads to the final outcomes and be able to monitor the mid-term changes and mini-steps along the way in a complex and broad project such as Kosice 2.0. Despite using a model which could facilitate participation it does not seem that there is an intention or a need to become more participative and involve actively more partners into the process.

System of Measuring
4 different pillars have been set so that they cover the whole spectrum of the expected impact of the project and its dimensions (cultural vibrancy, life satisfaction, local government, data, creative economy). 14 different variables represent the mini-steps (such as visits to museums and events, life satisfaction rate, trust in public institutions, policy recommendations, tasing awareness in the use of data, citizens participation in entrepreneurial activities) and there is a clear method to measure all of theses different variables and this is prescribed in the most accurate way in the methodology document. The team will be measuring external parameters (areas outside the project that could be affected or statistics acquired by organisations outside the project- eg. increase or decrease in the number of tickets into the museum visits as measured by the Statistical Office) and internal parameters (areas within the project that are directly affected and statistics taken by feedback forms from people involved in the project). 

Take away points:

• Using Theory of Change model is a very effective methodology when working with a broad and complicated project and there is a need in following and mapping the mid-steps to achieve the broader goals

• Working with internal and external system of measuring is a great idea to better justify results 

Communication is one of the strongest elements of Kosice 2.0 that utilizes a multiplicity and diversity of inspiring ways to reach out and engage with target beneficiaries and audience. Communication is in line with the participative culture embedded in the project and is an open and engaging process that goes much beyond than offering the simple information.  

Open and engaging communication is one of the strongest elements of Kosice 2.0 that utilizes a multiplicity and diversity of inspiring ways to reach out and engage with target beneficiaries and audience. We could definitely argue that this type of open and fresh communication is embedded to the project’s identity as this aims to reach out to the different target-communities of Kosice (artists, IT start ups, traditional entrepreneurs, active citizens, City officials), inviting them to become active, participate and interact in a number of ways with the initiative: be part of a new hybrid ecosystem in the Bravo building; come with an idea and explore innovations collaborating with other fellow citizens while getting support from experts in the field; participate to the networking meet ups of East Side heroes and learn, share or exchange ideas under a specific theme; take part to the community meet ups for participatory planning organized by the Mobile Urban Lab and CXI and change the experience of city parks; answer questionnaires and fill in feedback forms participating to the evaluation of program’s activities or help measure the impact of the project to the overall well-being. The communication team is using mainly digital channels of communication where it also publishes and distributes its calls to action: a very well developed website which is regularly updated with news, stories, articles, interviews videos and translated in English; social media accounts in Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube channel.

Sustaining energy despite limitations

Despite the challenges that emerged from the measures taken to prevent the spread of the pandemic, the project managed to sustain the energy among its community of end users and audience utilizing digital solutions combined with larger physical events whenever this was possible.

Going beyond the simple information

Kosice 2.0 has been reaching out to its audience through calls to action, as a large part of its communication activities are participative events, workshops, accelerator programs, hackathons or competitions. Engaging with the audience through collaborative actions help convey the messages of the project in ways that go beyond sharing simply the information.

Challenges to convey key messages

Kosice 2.0 project works quite successfully when it comes to a participative approach to communication. However, the communication team has been facing challenges when it comes to crafting a concise and clear message regarding what the project is about. Kosice 2.0 is a broad and complex project with many dimensions that is not easily described to a wider audience with one sentence. To overcome this problem, the management team is outsourcing the work of crafting concise and clear messages to an international company that will also help the project acquire international visibility. 

Take away points:

• Communication is aligned with the participative culture embedded in the project and many of the project’s flag collaborative activities (Urban Innovation Sphere, Mobile Urban Lab) perform also as major communication events 

• Going beyond sharing simply the information using a series of calls to action help establish a two-way inclusive communication

• Use of questionnaires and feedback forms help engage with audience and target beneficiaries right from the start

There is a certain confidence that the project is going to be embraced by a national and international community and that the reputation and other activities of its leader CIKE will help attract international attention and disseminate results to a wider network.

Although it is early to have a complete view of upscaling opportunities for Kosice 2.0, we can definitely argue that there is a certain confidence that the project is going to be embraced by a national and international community. This is based on the fact that its leader, CIKE organization, enjoys its wide reputation at a national level but also has the capacity and skills to attract international attention, especially with a project funded by Urban Innovative Actions. A the same time CIKE is very active in the community running a range of programs and networking activities through Kosice 2.0 but also beyond and this is a great opportunity to disseminate the results of the project to a wider network. 

At the same time, the project consists of different components such as the CXI, Mobile Urban Lab and Urban Innovation Sphere that could work not only as an ecosystem but also as independent items and that could facilitate the upscaling process.