Most nights, the Festsaal Kreuzberg is a concert venue in one of Berlin's cooler districts, but this week it was taken over by bureaucrats. But not just any bureaucrats — these were "creative bureaucrats," a term that sounds like more of a paradox than it should, since the public sector has seen much innovation in recent years.
That at least is the view of the attendees of the Berlin's Creative Bureaucracy Festival, now in its ninth year, which claims to be the world's largest festival for public service innovation. Some might say there's an irony to the fact that the event has found a home in Berlin, whose creaky and underfunded bureaucracy has become a hoary joke.
But the home feels natural, as the venue was filled young people with an optimistic attitude: The Creative Bureaucracy Festival had a sunny garden where an acoustic guitar duo was playing summery hits, there were workshops about how to make bureaucracy more empathetic, and special "Creative Bureaucrat" pins for festival-goers to wear.
"Here at this festival you'll find people who want to do administration better," said Theresa Twachtmann, CEO of PD, a German in-house consultancy for the public sector serving the federal government, states, municipalities, and institutions. "It's an intrinsic motivation. A lot of the people here could be working in business and probably make more money, but they consciously chose to make a contribution in public administration."
