DIY Performance Culture of Folkets Park, Malmö : Creative Play, Community and Ownership of Public Space

Abstract: DIY Performance Culture in Folkets Park. Ian Muller This thesis is a qualitative applied cultural analysis of Folkets Park, Malmö: specifically Do It Yourself (DIY) creative theatrical performance as a form of playing. During the summer of 2012, over 1,000 quantitative Social Return on Investment surveys were collected for the city to assess the park’s ‘value’ to visitors compared to the municipal operating costs. In an effort to compliment this study, I will address the question of ‘value’ as worth, as benefit and as utility and what this means to the various stakeholders: municipal policy-makers, the community and economic interests. Using interviews, photos and focus groups as ethnographic methods to compliment the surveys, I review comparative ideologies and policies towards urban commons and public needs and usage. Ethnographic sensorial descriptions of the park space and activities during the summer of 2012 will hopefully also serve as a documentary tool for posterity as well. What is the value of an urban park? Playful performing creates trust, place-attachment, and symbolic-ownership of space, social cohesion and a sense of community. The balances of prescriptive and implied rules of society are played with on the playfield created by the structures of capital, government policy and the public. The social capital which is created, like real capital, is being reinvested in the new knowledge and innovation economy by the city of Malmö and the region of Skåne. Analyzing usage and municipal policy, past and present, will help answer the question of what ‘value’ is in this context and address the future of urban parks and commons. Keywords: DIY; Performance; Urban commons; symbolic ownership; place attachment; Urban Parks; co-creation; Urban Planning; Social Return on Investment; Gröntorget; neo-Olmstedian; post-Olmstedian; creative play; leisure space; Malmö; Skåne; event management; Knowledge Economy; Innovation; play-scape.