We’re excited to share some highlights from the three-day forum Spontaneous Cities, which took place on 16–18 July 2026 in Sofia as part of the third edition of the Nine Elephants Festival. The forum brought together artists, curators, researchers, architects, and cultural practitioners for informal, peer-led exchanges around artistic and interdisciplinary approaches to cities, public space, communities, and urban ecologies.
Working from Sofia, the programme focused on the idea of the “spontaneous – a city shaped not only by planning and design, but also by informal interactions, self-organized processes, everyday practices, and unexpected forms of collective life. Across three days, participants shared practices and approaches through presentations, discussions, walks, workshops and collective explorations across different parts of Sofia.
The programme brought together practitioners working across different contexts and disciplines, including Nehal El-Hadi, Friederike Steinert, Ashique Mohammad, Aleksandar Pilyov, Anton Tsanev, Ekaterina Leondieva, Galina Dimitrova & Daniil Komitski, Lea Novák & Szonja Urbán, girls can scan, Rachel Rea, Wenlin Tan, Mihaela Ion, Fanni Nánay, Kalina Nedelcheva, Nevena Delić, Lenka Kuricová, and Yana Akimova.
Through the presentations and discussions, we explored how public spaces are shaped by memory, informal action, ecological processes, and everyday participation. We discussed the Flamingo Revolution in Tirana, architectural ruins and heritage in Sofia, the role of independent cultural organisations in Romania, and the ways temporary communities emerge through storytelling, movement, and collective action. The walks invited participants to encounter Sofia through its metro and socialist monuments, to map ecological networks, listen with water, explore sound and memory, discuss land and property, consider open-air museums as spaces of care, and create a collective map of Sofia’s Central Cemetery.
The forum was intentionally informal and process-oriented, focusing on the exchange of methods, tools, and ways of working rather than finalized results. It brought together different urban contexts and perspectives, asking how cities can remain open to spontaneity, unexpected encounters, care, and collective action.
Thank you to everyone who joined, shared, walked, listened, discussed, and helped create these three days of collective learning and exploration.
Spontaneous Cities was organized by Center for Social Vision as part of the Nine Elephants Festival.
Nine Elephants and the forum are financially supported by the National Culture Fund, the Ministry of Culture, and Sofia Municipality.
PRESENTATIONS
photos by Rosina Pencheva
WORKSHOPS
WALKS
