Public Vitality Camp

The new testing ground for public capacity to meet our complex times with action

September 17-19, 2026 / Teufelsberg, Berlin

Australia 2027, Naarm / Melbourne Campsite TBC
European Summer 2027, Montserrat, Catalonia

The Camp

Complex crises in an age of polycrisis – democratic erosion, geopolitical tension, environmental tipping points – have been extensively discussed and analyzed, but rarely translated to a sufficiently tactile format for action.

The gap between institutional and everyday realities continues to widen.

For the first time ever, we will bring public administration, civil society, academia, and community together through a 2×100 days' process for collaboratively addressing real-world issues in place, featuring a 3-day Public Vitality Camp on Teufelsberg as a moment of intense focus. The result: concrete pilots, newfound collaborations, and public capacity for action that radiates from the local context.

The format thrives on those who help shape it. Become part of the Camp.

campnoSpam@nextlearning.earth

Onboarding

Forging transdisciplinary alliances

Camping

Laboratory for public vitality & cultural diplomacy

Offboarding

From Impulses to structures and maintenance

100 days before

Administration meets civil society
Science meets neighborhood
Security meets culture
Business meets activism

Lines of conflict become visible and manageable

3 days on site at Teufelsberg

Storytelling formats & rituals
Workshops & ideathons
Walks & Discourses
Prototyping & alliances

Exchange bridges from the geopolitical to the concrete

100 days after

Clarify responsibilities
Consolidate micro-infrastructures
Integration into district
Documentation for bioregions & beyond

Ideas from the Camp are adopted on site and in the neighborhood

Beyond Berlin

Societal complexity is not unique to Berlin. From the outset, the Public Vitality Camp is intended to be a transferable, malleable blueprint to adapt in other regional contexts, functioning as a container for local issues, tensions, and actors. As part of the Planetary Civics Inquiry, further editions in Australia and Catalonia are under development with local partners. Each Camp is rooted in place and local understanding, while learnings and imagination can cross-pollinate across Camps for building a planetary public vitality.

If you would like to bring the format to your own region, please get in touch!

Contribute

Preparation for the Public Vitality Camp 2026 on Teufelsberg is underway. Tickets will become publicly available later this summer.

If you or your organization would already like to contribute—with themes, questions, or perspectives core to public vitality—we'd welcome your involvement. Ideas and concepts that go beyond conventional event and participation formats energize us. Get in touch at

campnoSpam@nextlearning.earth

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Partnerships

The Public Vitality Camp is being developed in collaboration with partner organizations from government, academia, business, and civil society. We envisage active partnerships where partners contribute concrete questions, substantive expertise, and networks, plus actively help shape the format.

What would you like to contribute, and what do you hope to gain from the Public Vitality Camp? Start engaging with us via

campnoSpam@nextlearning.earth

Team

Caroline Paulick-Thiel

Johanna Sieben

Tim Lazaroff

The team who has initiated the Public Vitality Camp process works at the intersection of public innovation, urban transformation, and democratic practice.

Caroline Paulick-Thiel is a strategic designer and co-founder of nextlearning, working with political and administrative institutions ranging from the local to the international level. Johanna Sieben served as Director of the Creative Bureaucracy Festival until 2025, and has been developing formats at the intersection of public innovation and democratic infrastructure since. Tim Lazaroff is an urbanist with a background in urban governance and international climate policy.

Together, they bring expertise in curatorial practice, institutional collaboration, strategic process design, and international networking to the Public Vitality Camp.