Talk - Tour - Studio - Lab

The creative center provides space for discourse through different formats in order to acknowledge current trends in urban life and creative work. These include exhibitions, festivals and lectures, which are organized together with designers, industry insiders and other experts from the creative industries.

• Talks offer the opportunity to examine and reflect on current issues, needs and challenges of the creative industries.
• Tours provide insights into the domain of creative professionals and (hidden) places of urban production.
• Studios offer space for working and experimenting freely as well as providing opportunities of presentation and performance to increase the visibility of creative work.
• Labs act as laboratories and workshops offering the chance to learn and to exchange by generating knowledge and discussing current approaches and theories.

"Mehrwert Kooperation": added value by cooperation

Against the background of current processes of economic change, departure focuses on an issue that is becoming increasingly important: cooperationas a way of working. Cooperation between creative companies and classical businesses can help to break habitual thinking patterns and structures in order to driveinnovation and new business models, on both sides.

At the same time, the approach of "cooperating on an equal footing" that breaks through the usual customer-supplier hierarchy, as well as the interaction of classic businesses and creative industries across the sectors, are as yet largely untested. Therefore, it is important to raise awareness of this model and its added value and to reduce obstacles, such as the lack of communication and information, on both sides. To this end, departure has developed a series of activities such as Learning Journeys and Creators Labs, with the objective of serving potential cooperation partners as a competence center that provides them with new impetus and support.

design>new strategies: StadtFabrik

As part of design>new strategies, a cooperation between the MAK and the Vienna Business Agency and its creative center departure, the newly established StadtFabrik [City factory] acts as a “real-time” research laboratory for new professional fields with a focus on creative disciplines, which aims to discover and highlight future potentials of cities in Digital Modernity. It will con­tinue the approaches of the exhibition project 2051: Smart Life in the City, which took place as part of the VIENNA BIENNALE 2015, and further develop the idea of “demon­strators” (participatory experiments throughout the city). New strategies for Vienna as a production site as well as new areas and forms of work in an era of widespread urb­anization and automation will play a prominent role in this undertaking.

The aim of the cooperation between MAK and departure is to establish a new platform for future-oriented projects that broaden the notion of design in Vienna. Since 2009, a continuous and interdisciplinary discourse has been opened up through lectures, presentations and workshops examining and redefining the interface between design and business.