PICNIC, Europe’s leading platform for the creative industries announced its program themes and a new venue for PICNIC Festival 2011 during a meet-up in the historic Waag building in Amsterdam.


Now in its sixth year, PICNIC reiterated its commitment to creativity and technology – in terms of content, involvement of the PICNIC community and its international reach. This event for professionals is internationally known for its innovative festival approach, combining cutting edge content with new, interactive program formats and a surprising and exciting visitors experience.

Waag Society director and PICNIC co-founder Marleen Stikker revealed the theme of PICNIC Festival 2011: “The PICNIC Festival theme is Urban Futures. We will explore the impact of global urbanization on our cities, societies and our lives and the way creative and smart technologies can play a role. The challenges following from mega urban environments in areas like demographic shifts, (natural) resources, infrastructure, health and governance are getting more and more pressing. PICNIC brings creative thinkers, developers, designers and entrepreneurs together to collaborate on possible solutions.”

“What will make PICNIC Festival 2011 really different compared to the preceding editions or any event out there is our theme as the starting point for everything”, says Creative Director, Marcel Kampman. “We are going to build an actual PICNIC City to prototype creative, urban applications and concepts and we will call upon the PICNIC community to help us build this temporary environment.” The PICNIC City will arise at a new location for PICNIC Festival: the NDSM Wharf on the North side of Amsterdam. PICNIC’s Program Director, Kitty Leering commented on the move: “We have had an amazing five years at the Westergasfabriek, but the time has come to challenge ourselves more, as well as offer our visitors a new experience. Moving our event to the NDSM Wharf gives us an excellent opportunity to take the look and feel of the festival to another level.”

According to Rob Post, chairman of the city district Amsterdam-North, the festival and this part of Amsterdam have similar characteristics: “PICNIC represents a strong pioneering spirit, innovation and creativity. That also holds true for Amsterdam North. We welcome PICNIC Festival 2011 to the sunny side of the IJ.”

PICNIC Festival will take place from 14 to 16 September 2011 at the NDSM Wharf in Amsterdam.

Since the very first edition of PICNIC, it has set the standard in its field — there was simply no event like it. Last year, we celebrated five beautiful years of PICNIC. Five years that connected people, leading to new friendships and ventures. We are really proud of that. However, meanwhile a lot has changed; TED became really big worldwide, local events started that partly overlap what PICNIC is and does. Is that a bad thing? No. That is great! They all contribute to a better world through technology, business and design. And competition helps focussing us om creating the best possible PICNIC we can make. And that is what we are going to do.

We feel it’s time for a change. A reboot. A firmware update. Past months we took the time to find ourselves again. To find out what makes PICNIC into PICNIC. And we think we figured it out. And this led to some big decisions, of which the most important one is that we will leave the Westergasfabriek terrain. Because of that, we also have the opportunity to redo everything, keep the best, redo the rest.

We’re not going to talk about the theme. We will be it, do it and live it. If you could build a city from scratch, what would it look like?
What will PICNIC Festival 2011 make really different compared to years before or any event out there is that the theme will be the starting point for e-ve-ry-thing. We are going to build a city to find solutions for the challenges of global urbanization. And everything with it. Yup, that’s stupidly ambitious, we know. But theory and stories is not enough. Best practices from elsewhere presented on a screen is nice, experiencing them in real is great. And next to that, our new location is nothing more than a concrete floor in a beautiful industrial environment near the water. Our goal is to have as little waste as possible, and leave behind only lasting inspiration and new connections.

To make this a truly impactful edition we are going to open up a lot and reinstate the network in its full 2011 glory, so everybody can join in to make it happen. The idea is to develop the area with some specialists to make sure the venue will be safe and the necessary things will be there, and to invite the community and the network to join in and collaborate. To make a prototype place, to try out new ideas or new uses of space and place. What will a temporary city look like? How can we build it with no waste? How can we facilitate a sheltered space for 700 people without going for what is easily available for rent but has no soul? Can we collectively build something that can be used after the three days of PICNIC Festival? Can we build something together we can learn from for actual cities? What can we learn from a favela? A refugee camp? What will be the role of technology on site? What does it mean for mobility? Retail? Health? How will it be livable, thriving, energetic? How can we mix functions, create hybrids, create ultimate flexibility?

In what will be created, we will program PICNIC Festival in. Workshops, talks, stories and the things you’d expect. But having an outdoor cinema, a pop-up ecological (super)market, a public transportation system, smart street furniture, street theatre, musicians and anything else you would expect in a city you can think up from scratch would be great.

For that we will ask people to collaborate, both business as the PICNIC network. It would be great to create a place that shows working prototypes of real companies and organizations, which they can try-out at the festival. And next to that, we will invite the network to help bring the city to life with temporarily facilities, art, performances, programming ideas and more. This will give the PICNIC City its own identity. After all, it’s the people that make a city come to life.

The network is at the heart of everything. Everything we do digitally will amplify the ideas, reach and goals of the network
We are totally going to reboot our website. To make this a truly impactful edition we are going to open up a lot and reinstate the network in its full 2011 glory, so everybody can join in to make it happen. Our current website does not match our high ambition. In order to realize our ambition it needs to help the PICNIC network with connecting to other people, to share ideas and inspiration, to collaborate on PICNIC Festival and other projects, and should of course inform you about everything in the world of PICNIC. Ambition is to build a lasting platform that helps to create, facilitate, exchange, make things happen. And not a conference website where you only can look up people you met in real life. To make this happen we are going to team up with Yoomee.

PICNICNewsNetwork, reporting from cities all over the world to create a visual image of the current state of affairs
Something new is the PICNICNewsNetwork, what will be a platform for continuous conversation on subjects related to the main theme of PICNIC Festival. This will be a mix of contributions in video, images and text to create an current view on the situation, opportunities, challenges globally. Because we can not work on solutions if we look no further than the personal world we live in daily. It will be a great place where you want to come back to.

Lastly for now, the design and communication: an eclectic visual eye-candy that communicates and dresses up the city, street meets heraldry meets advertising meets signage meets art
For the communication this year we go for a visual language that is highly diverse, mixing the PICNIC style with elements from:
- heraldry (like flags, coats of arms, family crests, etc.), – street art (graffiti, tags, tiles, interventions, etc.)
- widely accepted global standardized iconography for routing, signage (from airports, busses, trams, trains, subways, toilets, etc. from all over the world)
- Advertising (posters, neon’s, etc.)
- Cultural posters (theatre shows, movies, festivals)
- Election campaigns
- Architectural/spatial structures (typograpic flower gardens you know from village or city entrances, rootop structures, items floating on water, etc.)
- Screen based communication (like a visually crowded Asian city streets, Times Square in NYC, Vegas, etc.)

All of this should lead to a visual language that bridges the old with the new in a new fresh way, what you would expect from a new city. The old secures that we secure that people have enough anchors to feel ‘at home’ and comfortable, while the new should surprise and inspire them.

Will be great!