OpenLivingLabDays (OLLD) is the annual event of the European Network of Living Labs (ENoLL) that we are part of as Bristol Living Lab. European Network of Living Labs is the international, non-profit, independent association of benchmarked Living Labs. We came together for 4 days to share our ideas, tools and methods. In sessions, workshops and networking spaces we presented and reflected on our own activities, made connections and explored new opportunities for collaborations across the globe. Beyond this, our journey gave us time for longer conversations and deep dive work across the teams we usually work in.
We were touched by the welcome keynote at OLLD held by Toni Caro from i2Cat. She was reflecting on the importance of taking responsibility for our own damaging behaviours in privileged positions and how we need to really work together to speed up the transformation towards just futures. Through a participatory act, with 450 people, connecting twigs she really landed the important point that ‘no single actor, single country, single sector has the solution to all the challenges and on the contrary, everyone can contribute to its solution’. That made us reflect on our role as Bristol’s Living Lab in a just transition and the important part that we can all play in neighbourhood participation.
We participated in a workshop held by some of the coordinators of the New European Bauhaus, an initiative that seeks to ground urban transitions in inclusivity, beauty and sustainability with a focus on local place making. An artist led an activity to explore the conference through location photography. They emphasised the importance of looking, noticing and being in a place. Emphasising how this approach could change top-down modes of planning and development. This made us reflect on the importance of our own arts-based approaches to co-creation and neighbourhood change making. The New European Bauhaus initiative gives hope that the EU Commission sees arts, culture and collective experimentation/learning as central to realising the objectives of the Green New Deal. Creative practices enable people with different views to speak about a shared situation on eye level, without losing their own standpoint and ways of seeing realities. That helps to shift power in existing positions and can even help to mediate conflicts based on different ways of seeing what matters to change a place.
KWMC CEO Carolyn Hassan presented KWMC’s Bristol Living Lab practice and reflected on the strategic role of Living Labs in regional transitions. She spoke about the importance of Living Labs working together and building local ecosystems. This empowers them to bridge tensions and mediate between top-down policymaking and people’s needs.
After that, we met our colleagues from Ideas for Change for lunch. KWMC and Ideas for Change have a long relationship, having co-designed The Bristol Approach framework back in 2016 and currently working together on TwinERGY. We used the opportunity to share ideas of how to engage people in research for change using cultural experiences like preparing food and eating together. We were also excited to prepare for their visit to Bristol this October.
Back at OLLD, we were thrilled to meet people who link Living Labs with Citizen Science to mobilise people for climate action. With peers from Climas, we shared ideas that are important for profiling our own approach to Citizen Science. In between, we were busy spreading the call out for participating as Neighbourhood Scientists in our current EU IMPETUS funded initiative, Collect to Connect. We are keen on sharing our approaches of using creative tools for democratising science and giving value to what people of Knowle West know about ecological health in their neighbourhood.
In the evening we took part in a collaborative building exercise that gave us all a physical experience of what the OLLD stand for, with a focus on ‘Living Labs for an era of transitions’ and how human-centric innovation is changing our lives.
The next day we shared our approach to making regenerative neighbourhoods, invited participants to take part in games to have an embodied experience of the difference between competitive and collaborative work, introduced systems thinking as a key concept that informs our work, shared more about our neighbourhood housing initiative We Can Make and invited people to dream about their own neighbourhoods and reflect on how they could make change in their own contexts.
In parallel, Annali Grimes spoke in a panel session about our Living Lab approach as showed within GREENGAGE, the Bristol pilot of TwinErgy, WeCanMake, Collect to Connect and the Community Climate Action Plans and how these projects are enabling a sustainable and just transition with and for the communities they relate to.
We are so excited to continue our work with the growing European Network of Living Labs. Keep your eyes peeled for events that celebrate creative solutions we co-designed in Bristol Living Lab, like Retrofit Reimagined or become part of the arts-based experiments we are currently running within Collect to Connect and Grounding Tech this autumn and winter in Knowle West.
