Living labs and (starting to call it) regenerative placemaking
Regenerative reflections #2 — Dominique Hes & Roos Gerritsma
Roos and Dominique both established labs at their respective institutions, in Melbourne Australia and Amsterdam, the Netherlands. This article explores: (1) why we set them up, (2) why we believe that living labs are a critical part of a regenerative journey of place, (3) the tools used and (4) some of the outcomes.
This is our introduction to both the labs, their background and some stories. Each lab resulted in many projects, events, initiatives and legacies, each deserve their own article, and will be featured as we further unpack our learning in the future.
Dominique’s story
- Why did we set up Place Agency
Place Agency (https://www.placeagency.org.au/) was established at the end of 2017, funded by the philanthropic organization, the Myer Foundation. The mission was to create the capacity to invest space with meaning, turning spaces in places. In a previous study it was shown that there was a significant gap between placemaking needs in practice and the skills that were being taught at universities.
But that is all rather boring, what was the real story? Well, it was to create the social field, to create caring for place, to create connection between stakeholders and to give students and industry the skills to hold these conversations.
Why is creating the social field such a driver for this? You might ask. Well this is where it links to regenerative development, that is the aim of regenerative development is to create the capacity for a place and its community to adapt to change, to thrive, by increasing its vitality. That is we need to enable the regeneration of the intangible, uniquely human, capacity to participate in the life and vitality of place; that is to create belonging, caring, attachment, understanding, love of place. What Indigenous communities call building the capacity to be custodians or stewards of place — or ‘Caring for Country’.
One of the best ways to explain the difference between regenerative development and standard development is the adaptation of the saying: “give a person a fish and they will eat for a day, teach them how to fish and they will eat for a lifetime”. This does not create an understanding of the limits of the system in which the fishing is occurring, and so when there is a crisis such as collapsing fish stock; then people cannot adapt. Not good for the fish, the people or the systems in which both exist. The intention of regenerative development is to add the line: “teach them to love the ocean”.
2. Why are living labs a critical part of the regenerative placemaking journey — creating the social field and enabling experimenting in place
By ‘teaching’ them to love the ocean you are creating the social field of understanding of the system and the role of the person in that system. And because it is ‘teaching to love’ then there is a sense of care, responsibility and agency over the well being of the ocean. That is placemaking. That is a tactical application of regenerative development.
The living lab enables the intention to create regeneration to be tested in the reality of place. Often we have ideas of what can work, but do not have the time or capacity to see if they resonate, if they will actually work. By testing ideas in place through a living lab, you are enabling local experimentation with the community, the local environment and the local conditions.
That was the model and the thinking underpinning Place Agency, enabling the students and the community to learn to ‘love’ place, and have agency over its development. The outcome was over 20 studios (labs on site with students, community and industry) across 7 universities, with over 10 events around the country engaging over 5000 students, community and industry. Further Place Agency developed a 12 unit free set of course resources that can be taken up by any group including videos, learning outlines, readings, and activities (https://teaching.placeagency.org.au/).
3. Tools used
Each studio was run by different academics, with different communities, different aims and in different contexts. Tools are outlined under each studio page on the Place Agency website.
Fundamentally, each studio (or lab) started with ensuring students could spend some time on site, either permanently as in the below Newport Lakes project, or for extended visits. It was also spending time earning the trust of the local authorities, community, businesses and each other.
4. Outcomes — case study Newport Lakes
The lab question was: How might we rethink the challenges of rapid population growth in our neighbourhoods and suburbs as an opportunity to maximize the benefits of public spaces through fostering community participation?
Over a period of 7 weeks the students were immersed in the Newport community. They were based at the site in the library, they had lunch at the different cafes, presented in the local community hall and held events on site with the community. The studio was open to all built environment disciplines with assessment strategies adapted to allow skill development and evaluation based on their future roles as placemakers.
Students worked collaboratively in small groups to plan, design and implement strategies for community engagement. In turn, designs were driven by the need to reflect and respond to community perceptions gathered during the engagement activities. Groups were required to manage a real budget, safety and policies of the Newport area.
To be effective placemakers, students were challenged to grow their skills with a focus on community engagement and how this process can be genuine, authentic and receptive. Key skills to this process involved active listening, creative engagement and appreciation of the important relationships between planning, design, society and the environment.
It wasn’t easy, the main community event ended up being a 42 degree day (almost 108 fahrenheit) with strong winds; even so there was a strong attendance. Other things that needed to be negotiated was the difference between a quick educational studio and the ability to get permission from the local government etc. Another major learning was the difference between imagining how an engagement could work and the reality of making it happen within budget, time and capacity. This taught students the agility of working in the field and to be able to adapt, let go or build on ideas. We were teaching them resonance.
There were many positive outcomes from this project, the council took on many of the ideas, the students learnt many skills, and community felt engaged. One example of a legacy innovation was by one group who invented the Imaginarium, a ‘window’ through which to see the site and draw ideas (image: PlaceAgency)
Roos’ story
The Urban Leisure & Tourism Lab Amsterdam was established in October 2015 and wasn’t as well underpinned initially with models and strategic thinking, as the Place Agency lab described above. Back in 2014/2015 I heard, read and discovered all kinds of new ways of carrying out research and education via field labs, living labs, studios, city labs, etc. Although various names were used, all labs seemed to strive for a same sense of innovation, urgency and playfulness. Appealing methods were applied, like research by design and above all: taking place outside of the classroom.
This last idea of working from a place-based perspective resonated strongly. It did not only resonate to me — as being an urban sociologist and trained to carry out action research in socio-spatial settings — but it resonated to many more colleagues with different backgrounds and positions (researchers and lectures) as well. Luckily our managers were open to give it a go and paved the way to start experimenting with a blank canvas. We were able to compose a small team of pioneers and hire our first desks outside of the office in a creative hub in Amsterdam North. It almost felt like a rebellious and adventurous act. Some colleagues were doubtful and asked: “What are you going to do? What kind of output will you generate?” — and we said: “We don’t know yet, but we are going to try to embrace the Big Unknown and will figure it out.” It became a bumpy ánd enriching road of collectively ‘learning by doing’.
- Terminology, core values, models, images and gaining a deeper understanding
In the years that followed, we were increasingly able to work on our conceptual frameworks and make sense out of our lab practices, experiences and design principles. During various team meetings we started to discuss our core values and ways of working. Back then, in 2016/2017, terminology such as: regenerative placemaking, regenerative tourism and regenerative education weren’t known to us. But I guess, when you look at the images below, you can even see if we didn’t have the words, we were practising these concepts we now name in 2022/2023.
Figure 1. First visualisation of the main practices and design principles of the Urban Leisure & Tourism Lab Amsterdam (2017). Drawn and written in Dunglish by our colleague Esther Bouw (who became the first learning director of our living labs, photo: Roos Gerritsma).
Looking at one of the first visualizations of the lab (figure 1),made during the academic year of 2017/2018, we recognize a lot of key concepts we still use and continue to develop. As Dominique describes above about creating a social field, we quickly understood as well we needed to build trust with local stakeholders and enable interactions between all of us. Place based learning and researching, also implied the practice of deep hanging out, as urban anthropologist, and our team member Philippa Collin called it.
Realizing this, caused a considerable shift. It meant slowing down the pace in which we were used to working. Gradually, it became more evident that we no longer entered the field, did our things and left the field right after. As can be seen at the bottom of the drawing: the brown part symbolizes the layer of humus that gets thicker and thicker in time: the social field expands and becomes increasingly fertile for local interventions to blossom. We also realized that our impact was partly considered as being a catalyzer for small scale solutions for complex challenges. At that time, we set some goals towards December 2018 and summarized our main raison d’être in the heading: developing inclusive and sustainable places and practices.
We continued to grow as a lab and moved from our second location at De Ceuvel, to a third one in another hub called Hollandse Nieuwe (New Dutch). New colleagues with a pioneering mind came on board and a new manager of our Research Department as well. Peggy van Schijndel thought it was about time to show and share our city lab to the outside world and she initiated the making of a lab magazine. It marked another moment of reflection and the lab team was stimulated to adjust its key concepts, methods and punch lines.
Whilst still not familiar with the regenerative paradigm, the regenerative storyline surely wanted to be born amidst us. We applied insights from a wide variety of (upcoming) ideas and partners such as: Theory U, co-creation practices and Fairbnb. We gained more and more local knowledge and a better understanding of the pains and dreams of the community of Amsterdam North and our role as a capacity builder within that. We learned more about what placemaking in an educational and on-site research setting meant and started to think in prototyping and potentiality.
First “posterzine” of the Urban Leisure & Tourism Lab Amsterdam: a magazine with stories (photo 1 an 2) that turns into a poster once unfolded (photo 3) — (photos Roos Gerritsma)
2. An Alternative and Upcycle Light Festival as a means to reconnect the community
One of the projects we worked on in 2017 was to co-design and organise the first Amsterdam Northern Light Festival. As it happens in many cities all around the world, a yearly Light Festival takes place in Amsterdam. However, in the city centre only and effectively branded to attract a lot of visitors and creating possibilities for entrepreneurs to make money during the (former) low season in winter time. Painful as it is to have the feeling of being constantly ignored as the Northern part of the city, that is only separated from the inner city by a river, an alternative was created with and for Northerners in the first place and open to anybody who wanted to experience it.
It took place and was initiated by De Ceuvel (www.deceuvel.nl) where our lab was located at that time. The festival was characterized by stimulating re-use of materials, local craftsmanship and community storytelling. Our lab students organized several sessions at local primary schools about reusing waste materials, also during the festival itself, hosted the event and did a part of the marketing and sponsoring. We made an after movie in Dutch and has English subtitles and English spoken parts as well, have a look: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Af6gJHV3Z88
We all learned a lot and one of the main quests remained: how do we create an inviting place for everyone? It was quite difficult to reach Old Northerners who still felt that “their” playground was taken over by New — hipster — Northerners. It was one of the reasons why we decided to develop an inclusive leisure design toolbox later on, and about which we will reflect another time. On the other hand, it was an inspirational event and the use of Light as a strategy for community building and placemaking keeps coming back to us. In fact, we are currently working on a grant with comparable ideas!
3. Urban gardeners who are preparing the soil
From 2020 onwards we finally got familiar with the regenerative paradigm shift. Regenerative tourism and placemaking became new pillars of reference, new sources of inspiration and possible pathways to incorporate into our daily practice as educators and researchers of the lab. In one of our forthcoming papers we call ourselves urban gardeners. When talking with students, we share an overview of main regenerative models and apply insights from nature and biomimicry for instance.
As all regenerators among us know, it takes time to fully understand the depth and width of the regenerative realm. As we keep on learning by doing, we try to “translate” regenerative ideas and keep on reflection on it, like this one: “Put simply — ‘regenerative’ means working the way nature works. When we’re being regenerative we are in-tune with inner-nature (our psychology, mindset and culture) and outer-nature (our relationships and activities), and are contributing to the evolutionary potential of life on Earth. We work with the grain of nature rather than against it. In reality, this is a never-ending and ever-evolving journey of deepening into life by becoming more of who we truly are, individually, organizationally, societally” (Hutkins, 2023) — Leading by Nature, derived from: https://thenatureofbusiness.org/2023/01/06/2023-welcome-to-the-age-of-regeneration-but-what-does-this-mean-for-our-organizations-and-ourselves/
