What is The Empty Square?

The Empty Square opened with the purpose of sharing knowledge and inspiration across disciplines on how to create a more meaningful everyday life and future for all of us. Changing the narrative is our passionate, ongoing ambition.

We put all our effort into it, including twenty years of research and storytelling-practice, because we sense an urgent need and a heartfelt longing for replacing the old, antiquated myths – those that keep telling us that economic growth on a finite Earth can continue forever; those that tell us that human beings are not a part of nature, but an outside force destined to dominate and conquer it; that greed and envy are needed as drivers in society; that consumption is the meaning of life. Etcetera.

We can do better than that. Much, much better.

We can reimagine things and act on it. We can change our perspectives and, together, change the narrative.

We established The Empty Square (the JOURNAL part) in 2019. We call it a participant media. It’s a unique collection of articles written by a wide range of people and organizations, sharing the same purpose: Changing the narrative by boosting strong communities, local resilience and holistic systemic changes. It consists of an ever-growing number of partners and participants, ranging from world-renowned artists and Nobel laureates, over global NGO’s and think tanks, to decisionmakers and scholars. The European Commission instantly made it a Best Practice.

Access to the JOURNAL is free of charge. It receives visitors from 150+ countries and has become a trusted source to readers across the globe. You can dive into our ever-growing list of fascinating articles right here.

By August 2022, we added The Empty Square IMAGINARIUM.

Believing in the power of storytelling, IMAGINARIUM floats on stories. Fictive stories that you can expect to get absorbed by. Stories whose characters and action will captivate you. Expect the fox, the doctor’s wife, Mr. J, and the puppeteer to stay with you for a while. We think they will.

The People behind The Empty Square

The Empty Square was founded by Julie Holck and Simon Glinvad Nielsen. Julie has a background as a scholar; Simon has 20+ years' experience as an author. Together we’ve been running LivingCities for more than a decade, advising and inspiring governments, municipalities, the European Parliament, the European Commission, developers, NGOs, and key stakeholders in private businesses. The primary goal has always been the shaping of living cities and communities that are resilient, both socially, economically, physically, and spiritually.

We’re running and developing The Empty Square with the support of a strong, growing, and specialized global team, ensuring the quality of everything from design over content creation to technical infrastructure and outreach.

Contact us

The Empty Square is being managed from a former worker’s house by a brook between Copenhagen and Elsinore, Denmark. The house used to belong to the local brickworks and the surrounding village was home to a large community of working families, many of them migrants, all employed at the brickworks. Today, the area is quiet and preserved as a bird sanctuary where the brook meets the sea. Across the Sound is the tiny island of Hven and the coast of Sweden.

Questions, comments, ideas? We’re here for you. You can reach Julie at julie@livingcities.dk or Simon at simonnielsen@livingcities.dk