Our Failure Lunch Concept is Launched!

22 November, SDSN Northern Europe launched the Failure Lunch Concept: a public forum where failures and lessons learned from failures are shared. “For me this is crucial to sustainable development in all areas. Failures are a natural part of the innovative processes that transform our society in sustainable directions.” Says Anna Nordén, Network Manager, SDSN Northern Europe.

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: It is the courage to continue that counts”

The Failure Lunch-concept was launched within the program of the Gothenburg Award for Sustainable Development,  the city’s international prize that recognizes and supports work towards sustainable development. This year’s award winner, Alejandro Aravena and four partners from the ‘Do Tank’ firm Elemental, together with Daniel Andersson from Social resource management at City of Gothenburg and Joakim Forsemalm, Associate Professors in Ethnology at Radar arkitekter & planering, shared inspiring stories about when dialogues for urban development didn’t go as expected and what they have learned.

“Both Success and failure is relative.”
“If you want to achieve a quality built environment, everyone has to raise their quality.”

Alejandro Aravena

“A promise that was never delivered – That is the key problem when working with dialogues in city development. And are we really listening?”

Joakim Forsemalm

“Dialogues don’t have a start and an end. We always inherit what has happened before.”

Daniel Andersson

Take part of the discussions on Twitter #FailureLunch

Watch a short interview with Joakim Forsemalm and Daniel Andersson:

SDSN Northern Europe hosted the event together with the GAME Network and Mistra Urban Futures.

Keep your eyes open for our next Failure Lunch.