This article analyzes how a city can generate instrumental, intrinsic, and institutional value from its event-related networks and platforms, based on the Hieronymus Bosch 500 program in the Dutch city of ‘s-Hertogenbosch (Den Bosch). Interviews with key stakeholders traced program dynamics over more than a decade to reveal processes of network and platform development, encapsulated in a conceptual model of strategic value creation. The results indicate that networks served to generate flows of resources, while programming helped develop platforms for knowledge generation and dissemination, helping to focus attention on the city. The Bosch 500 Foundation managing the program played an effective role in developing and supporting networks, which in turn generated significant short-term instrumental and intrinsic value. However, the failure to establish a sustainable city-wide platform related to the Bosch program caused institutional value destruction, which many saw as a missed opportunity. The study of networks and platforms can benefit from a longitudinal approach as well as a broader, contextual view of event networks.
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This paper reports on a multiple-case study of five participants in a school-university research network in a Dutch master's program. Outcomes indicate that use of existing network structures in master's programs is complex, but could be a promising avenue for creating succesful school-university networks.
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This introduction to the special issue on events as platforms, networks, and communities reviews recent research on these subjects. It outlines the previous work of the ATLAS Events Group in developing a “network approach to events,” as well as conceptualizing the differences between event networks and platforms.
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Codarts, as a University of the Arts, develops practice-oriented research to enhance artistic development, the arts practice and arts education. Performing arts, specifically dance, music and circus, enable us to communicate beyond geographical, cultural, linguistic and religious boundaries and helps us connect our common values and dreams. The performing arts are universal in their capacity to unite and inspire, providing an excellent opportunity for us to expand our research to an international level. However, the current research strategy at Codarts does not sufficiently match our European research ambitions, even though our education is inherently international and there are multiple strong connections to relevant themes in the European Research Area. Accordingly, with this project, we aim to bridge the gap between our current national research activities and our European ambitions by aligning our research focus with the European Research Area. The aim is to develop a strategy that enriches the arts practice, arts education and our research, creating a stronger connection to the European Research Area and to relevant European networks. Expanding the scope of our practice-oriented research towards European projects is essential to increase research opportunities, improve the applicability and societal impact of our research outcomes and provide more opportunities for students, teachers and researchers to learn and exchange knowledge and insights. Additionally, it is necessary to create a sustainable future for our institution. Strategic brainstorm sessions, benchmark studies, detailed action plans and viability assessments need to make sure that we become aware of our current position in the European research field, as well as identify potential partners and networks to collaborate with. This project will eventually work towards participation in a relevant European project proposal as the first step towards strengthening our position as a leading University of the Arts in Europe.
Collaborative networks for sustainability are emerging rapidly to address urgent societal challenges. By bringing together organizations with different knowledge bases, resources and capabilities, collaborative networks enhance information exchange, knowledge sharing and learning opportunities to address these complex problems that cannot be solved by organizations individually. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the apparel sector, where examples of collaborative networks for sustainability are plenty, for example Sustainable Apparel Coalition, Zero Discharge Hazardous Chemicals, and the Fair Wear Foundation. Companies like C&A and H&M but also smaller players join these networks to take their social responsibility. Collaborative networks are unlike traditional forms of organizations; they are loosely structured collectives of different, often competing organizations, with dynamic membership and usually lack legal status. However, they do not emerge or organize on their own; they need network orchestrators who manage the network in terms of activities and participants. But network orchestrators face many challenges. They have to balance the interests of diverse companies and deal with tensions that often arise between them, like sharing their innovative knowledge. Orchestrators also have to “sell” the value of the network to potential new participants, who make decisions about which networks to join based on the benefits they expect to get from participating. Network orchestrators often do not know the best way to maintain engagement, commitment and enthusiasm or how to ensure knowledge and resource sharing, especially when competitors are involved. Furthermore, collaborative networks receive funding from grants or subsidies, creating financial uncertainty about its continuity. Raising financing from the private sector is difficult and network orchestrators compete more and more for resources. When networks dissolve or dysfunction (due to a lack of value creation and capture for participants, a lack of financing or a non-functioning business model), the collective value that has been created and accrued over time may be lost. This is problematic given that industrial transformations towards sustainability take many years and durable organizational forms are required to ensure ongoing support for this change. Network orchestration is a new profession. There are no guidelines, handbooks or good practices for how to perform this role, nor is there professional education or a professional association that represents network orchestrators. This is urgently needed as network orchestrators struggle with their role in governing networks so that they create and capture value for participants and ultimately ensure better network performance and survival. This project aims to foster the professionalization of the network orchestrator role by: (a) generating knowledge, developing and testing collaborative network governance models, facilitation tools and collaborative business modeling tools to enable network orchestrators to improve the performance of collaborative networks in terms of collective value creation (network level) and private value capture (network participant level) (b) organizing platform activities for network orchestrators to exchange ideas, best practices and learn from each other, thereby facilitating the formation of a professional identity, standards and community of network orchestrators.
This project aims to develop a measurement tool to assess the inclusivity of experiences for people with varying challenges and capabilities on the auditory spectrum. In doing so, we performed an in-depth exploration of scientific literature and findings from previous projects by Joint Projects. Based on this, we developed an initial conceptual model that focuses on sensory perception, emotion, cognition, and e[ort in relation to hearing and fatigue. Within, this model a visitor attraction is seen as an “experienscape” with four key elements: content, medium, context, and individual. In co-creative interviews with experts by experience with varying challenges on the auditory spectrum, they provided valuable insights that led to a significant expansion of this initial model. This was a relevant step, as in the scientific and professional literature, little is known about the leisure experiences of people with troubled hearing. For example, personal factors such as a person’s attitude toward their own hearing loss and the social dynamics within their group turned out to greatly influence the experience. The revised model was then applied in a case study at Apenheul, focusing on studying differences in experience of their gorilla presentation amongst people with varying challenges on the auditory spectrum.Societal issueThe Netherlands is one of the countries in Europe with the highest density of visitor attractions. Despite this abundance, many visitor attractions are not fully accessible to everyone, particularly to visitors with disabilities who sometimes are not eligible to ride due to safety concerns, yet when eligible generally still encounter numerous barriers. Accessibility of visitor attractions can be approached in various ways. However, because the focus often lies on operational and technical aspects (e.g., reducing stimuli at certain times of the day by turning o[ music, o[ering alternative wheelchair entrances), strategic and community-focused approaches are often overlooked. More importantly, there is also a lack of attention to the experience of visitors with disabilities. This becomes apparent from several studies from Joint Projects, where visitor attractions are being visited together with experts by experience with various disabilities. Nevertheless, experience is often being regarded as the 'core product' of the leisure sector. The right to meet, discover, develop, relax and thus enjoy this core product is hindered for many people with disabilities due to a lack of knowledge, inaccessibility (physical, digital, social, communicative as well as financial) and discrimination in society. Additionally, recreation entrepreneurs still face a significant gap in reaching the potential market of guests with disabilities and their networks. Thus, despite the numerous initiatives in the leisure sector aimed at improving accessibility on technical and operational fronts, often people with disabilities are still not being able to experience the same kind of enjoyment as those without. These observations form the pressing impetus for initiating the current research project, tapping into the numerous opportunities for learning, development and growth on making leisure offer more inclusive.Benefit to societyIn total, the current project approach comes with a number of enrichments in terms of both knowledge and methodology: a mixed-methods approach that allows for comparing data from different sources to obtain a more complete picture of the experience; a methodological co-design process that honours the 'nothing about us without us' principle; and benchmarking for a group (i.e., people with challenges on the auditory spectrum) that despite the size of its population has thus far mostly been overlooked.
