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Our organisation is called Connectors Malmö. We are an NGO, non-profit organization in the south of Sweden, run 100% by volunteers, independent of any political party or religious group. Everything we do it is free and open to the public. Our goals are to encourage a variety of citizens of different cultures and ages to explore, engage and give back to the city. We focus on social innovation, collaboration and the importance of shared spaces for doing and learning. Our purpose is to encourage Malmö citizens to engage with the many opportunities in the city. In doing so, each individual can gain experiences, connections and inspiration. We hope these skills will be invested back into the world and used to bring about a positive social impact. We believe that Malmö can become a more accessible city and can exist as an oasis of possibilities for individuals from all walks of life to grow in their aspirations and goals. We believe that the diversity found in Malmö , hand-in-hand with the spirit of social empowerment can act as a powerful positive force. Our target group is residents of Malmö that want to make the city a better place for everybody. We reach a very creative community of international residents and local entrepreneurs with a strongest focus on international students.

WHAT WE DO

The Connectors Salon - Monthly inspirational talks held in a relaxed setting featuring some of the most aspiring folk in town. We meet at STPLN, an open house for creatives, doers and developers located in the Western Harbour. The event is free and open to everybody. We focus on sustainable living and working, social innovation and creative processes, combining networking and informal learning.

For Malmö by Malmö - This event is a chance for individuals from all facets of society to unite and creatively collaborate to finding solutions to some of the greater dilemmas facing the social cultural life in Malmö. We get people together in a creative atmosphere, we bring challenges and try to come up with projects to make the city a better place. We had 2 events, in May 2013 and in November 2013, with more than a 100 participants each time, organic and fair trade home-made food, live music, workshops and hours of exploration, and planning our third edition for the fall 2014. The event is free and open to everybody. Some of our partners are Region Skåne, Malmö University, Glokala Folkhögskolan, Kontxt and Stpln, and we collaborate with several organizations and local companies.

Mapping Malmö - We want to develop a tool to visualize resources in Malmö, such as collaborative working spaces and places where you can print things, build and fix things or get help to get projects started. We are now starting to work on an app version of Mapping Malmö. We also see Malmö as a great city to test these kind of tools. We’ll continue to work on this during 2014/2015.

The Networking Bank - We’re making a bank of people in the region that are willing to work on collaborative projects to make Malmö (and everywhere else) a better place for all. The networking bank is a visual tool to find people to work with. We take your photo and your info and make it available to other creative entrepreneurs. You share what you are good at and in which kind of project you would like to work. It’s free and easy to use. We developed the alpha version and we are working in the version beta to launch in the upcoming half of 2014. This tool will be useful for starting a project, when we need help from others, especially useful for newly arrived residents. Networking is a long and demanding process and we want to speed it up. We also want to develop this tool and collaborate with companies and public entities to help team members to connect with each other.

The Connectors Hub & Residency - We are currently planning a project that will involve the participation of the local municipality, the region and MKB. We will be developing the model during 2014 and start operating in 2015. The residency is a playground for ideas and innovators combining learning-by-doing workshops in the field of social innovation and social design, a creative environment to experiment, mobile furniture, office and meeting spaces and sustainable living. Residents will donate time for common projects to empower local community. Residents will experiment and test new ideas with the community that will eventually develop into independent initiatives, much like an incubator for collaborative consumption companies. Participants will be able to share and exchange skills by working together on projects for the common good. The entrepreneurs will bring ideas, business drives and connections to existing grassroots initiatives and networks. The local community will bring currently unutilised skills that are essential to realize upcycling and collaborative consumption projects.