Olympic Park

At the end of conference Day 1, the delegates were invited
 to the world famous Olympic Park...

 After a long first day of networking, sharing ideas and debating street paper issues at the INSP annual conference, delegates were invited to have dinner at the world famous Olympic Park.

The Munich landmark was built for the 1972 Olympic Games and has since become a tourist hot spot, featuring world class sports facilities, a shopping mall, and an open air cinema.

...where they enjoyed dinner
 in a relaxed atmosphere.

Over dinner the delegates continued networking, chatting about their street papers and exchanging impressions from their conference day. They enjoyed the friendly atmosphere on a perfect summer evening in Munich.

 After dinner, the participants were taken to Olympic Park’s open-air Theatron where, surrounded by the amazing views of the park, there was a showing of two films created by street paper BISS. First the audience watched a short documentary about people who make their living by collecting returnable bottles that BISS used to recruit new vendors. The second film, "Hotel BISS", was shown.

Hotel BISS was a project started in 2007 by BISS to turn a former women and youth’s prison at Neudeck into a 72 room four-star hotel where 40 young people in particular social difficulty (some of them former inmates at Neudeck) would work and live while they received vocational training. The first class hotel was also to have 11 additional rooms for housing the elderly.

Hildegard Denninger (BISS, Germany)
opened the showing of her movie
"Hotel BISS".

Unfortunately, after massive fundraising efforts lasting over four years, in 2011 BISS’s bid for the listed building was rejected by the Free State of Bavaria in favour of a commercial company, destroying an innovative social business before it began.

The Hotel BISS movie charted the hopeful beginnings and ultimate failure of the project. At a time when street papers are changing their model and gearing it towards social enterprise and social development (both of which are new award categories at the INSP awards at the end of the conference), the film gave delegates a lot to think and talk about.