10 November 2017

Kick-off SMULLN project at City-makers Congress

On Friday, the 10th of November, ICIS presented and tested the LABkit with ca 50 participants of the “City-makers Congress ” in Rotterdam. The LAB kit is an output of the URB@Exp project led by ICIS. In this project, a foresight and design company, four academic and five city partners jointly developed guidelines for urban labs as a new form of participatory urban governance.

The session was not only great fun, but also productive in making participants reflect on (plans for) real existing urban labs. Overall, the LAB kit seems to be a welcome and user-friendly tool for guiding reflection processes. In a parallel session during the afternoon, Joop de Kraker, Nicole Rijkens-Klomp and Christian Scholl kicked off the SMULLN project, together with the “Stimuleringsfonds creatieve industrie” and six participating city labs.

In the coming year, the LABkit will be extensively tested in Schiedam, Midden-Delfland, Breda, Antwerpen, Weert and Maastricht in order to support the creation of re-orientation of city labs. Next to a better understanding of the functioning of this learning tool, the project aims to deliver new insights in the functioning of urban labs as smart form of urban governance.