From Living Labs to Community of Practice
BACKGROUND/HISTORY AND CONTEXT OF THE WORKSHOP
We represent the European Nature-based solutions (NBS) project URBiNAT, which focuses on an inclusive urban regeneration as part of the development of healthy corridors within social housing neighborhoods, through an innovative catalogue of NBS, ensuring sustainability and mobilising forces for social cohesion. Interventions focus on the public space to co-create with citizens new urban, social and nature-based relations within and between different neighbourhoods (Ballon, Pierson, & Delaere, 2005).
Taking the full physical, mental and social well-being of citizens as its main goal, URBiNAT aims to co-create a healthy corridor as an innovative and flexible NBS, which itself integrates a large number of micro NBS emerging from community-driven design processes. Through activation of living labs, the project co-creates healthy corridors in Nantes, Porto, Sofia, Siena, Nova Gorica, Brussels and Høje-Taastrup as well as working with observer cities in China and Iran and other countries.
MAIN AIM / OBJECTIVE
The aim of the workshop is to facilitate an exchange of good practices and challenges in terms of how to support and engage citizens in co-creative processes in living labs, considering participation as a means (dialogue between different kinds of knowledges) (Lars-Olof and Ulrika, 2011) and as an end (introduction and reinforcement of local participatory cultures) (Hislop, 2004). From the exchange, we hope to identify agents of specific good practices and special interest groups around whom we would set up potential communities of co-creative practices for additional exchange also after the workshop.
Having a living lab process as the main source for the empirical co-creative ideas and data in the URBINAT project we need to understand how the theories of communities of practice (Wenger, 1999; Wenger et al., 2002) might provide insights about interaction dynamics in innovation activities, mainly in a user-centric innovation approach from a community of practice perspective.
EXPECTED OUTCOMES
The outcomes of the workshop will be very specific learning points to be further assessed and integrated into the activation and co-creative processes of the living labs and healthy corridor establishment during the URBiNAT project.
A further outcome will be the establishment of a wider community of practice that will allow workshop participants and other interested persons to exchange experiences via an open online discussion forum that the URBiNAT project will facilitate at least for the rest of its duration (until 2023). Our conceptual model of CoP highlights two levels of brokering: i) inner-level within living labs; ii) outer-level between stakeholders. The CoPs can act as catalysts, encouraging people to meet in certain frameworks, focusing on topics they share concern and/or passion for, learning from each other.
This is different from trying to build a joint field of a completely new community, the aim should primarily be to break boundaries to reach a mutual understanding.
BRIEF OUTLINE / METHODOLOGY
We will use the methodologies of: facilitation of motivational interviewing, posters and ideation. We want to help participants accomplish their goals in each of their co-creative living labs, with the following facilitation:
1) What do you like and works better for co-creation in your projects? ;
2) What are the challenges you face and what you would like to change in your practice? ;
3) How can we help each other and co-design together better strategies for co-creation?
Posters will present and illustrate URBiNAT’s co-creation process and planning, as well as participatory methodologies of URBiNAT’s catalogue of NBS, considering participation as a means and as an end, which will allow each of the groups to determine key learnings for capacity building and self-determination (URBiNAT, 2018). The ideation methodology will enable to set the stage on how an online discussion forum should be designed, i.e. co-building and ideation of the CoP app concept (Wolkerstorfer, et al, 2009).
LINKS
Workshop Facilitators
Américo Mateus
Creative Director
Américo Mateus
Creative DirectorAmérico Mateus - Ph.D - has a Ph.D degree in Business Management and Marketing from Évora University and an undergraduate background in Industrial Design, completed in IADE. Currently is lecturer and invited teacher at IADE (since 1998), Évora University (since 2006), FH.Voralberg in Dornbirn Austria (since 2006). He has been working as Designer, Creative Director and Innovation Expert consultant. Since 2001, he is a researcher at UNIDCOM/IADE, where he developed and registered the IDEAS(R)EVOLUTION co-creation Design Thinking methodology. He is author and coauthor of more than 35 international scientific research papers published and presented around the theme of Design Thinking, Innovation and Creativity.
Ingrid Andersson
Ingrid Andersson
Ingrid Andersson - Ms Ingrid Andersson, EMBA, HEC Paris, with a major in Differentiation and Innovation through Services. Her research focuses on community engagement and digital society, business development and women entrepreneurship. Her major current engagements include citizen engagement in support of nature-based solutions in URBiNAT coupled with “learn-for-life”, a novel holistic behavioural-change methodology developed in collaboration with researchers at Karolinska Institute in Stockholm and King’s College in London. Other current projects include “JUMP”, a behaviour-based health promotion program targeting primary schools, and a project on capacity-building in support of women-entrepreneurship, both with support of Qatar Foundation.
Knud Erik Hilding-Hamann
Business Consultant
Knud Erik Hilding-Hamann
Business ConsultantMSc in International marketing, Director, Center for Ideas & Innovation, Danish Technological Institute, Aarhus, Denmark. Knud Erik Hilding-Hamann has worked at the Institute since 1998 and prior to that, 10 years as a business consultant in England, UK. The center employs 20 consultants and conducts more than 200 innovation and technology development assignments per annum in partnership with Danish and foreign companies, public institutions and organisations. Knud Erik is also the project leader of the publicly funded innovation agent program in Denmark, which involves 35 innovation agents across nine advanced technology institutes with the task in 2016-2018 of conducting 475 innovation audits and 290 project initiations in small and medium sized enterprises per annum.
Nathalie Nunes
Researcher
Nathalie Nunes
ResearcherNathalie Nunes - Nathalie is French and Portuguese, researcher at the Centre for Social Studies of the University of Coimbra (Portugal), and currently member of the co-coordination team of URBiNAT (H2020 project). She graduated in international and European law (University of Paris Nanterre, France), and holds a research master's degree in international and European law of fundamental rights (University of Nantes, France). PhD candidate in sociology of law at the University of Coimbra, her thesis project is on the 2005 urban uprisings in the French suburbs. Nathalie gained international experience in Cape Verde and Brazil, and collaborated as a professional and a volunteer with organizations promoting and defending human rights, children's rights and the environment.