After two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, the question for communities is no longer “if” they should act urgently to address social or environmental issues, or even “why” they should transform the ways of doing things, but rather “how to do it.”
"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them"- Albert Einstein.
How might we generate creative spaces to collaborate and think differently together in new ways? How might we imagine and test new community-led solutions? Regardless of the issues at hand or the sector, how might we innovate while engaging people with lived or living experiences in designing solutions?
At the Tamarack Institute, our experience with community change has taught us to appreciate that to be effective, Community Innovation requires an appreciation of both the issue one is hoping to address, as well as a deep understanding of the unique characteristics of the community – the place and the people within it – where the innovation will be implemented.
Among existing Community Innovation practices, Living Labs seem very promising, as it is a place-based approach that is context-specific. At Tamarack, we value that community engagement is the driving force of Living Labs and involves those with lived of living experience (or context experts).
"It’s a creative process led by a group of people from different backgrounds, working to find solutions that respond to the needs and aspirations of their community. It's action-oriented, focusing on co-design, testing, experimenting to find new solutions."
- Danielle Lafontaire, associate professor of territorial development at the Université du Québec à Rimouski1
"Living Labs focus on designing solutions, which is an iterative cycle where we define the issue, we brainstorm on potential solutions, we move to prototype solutions, testing, evaluating and we repeat that process until the solution has the impact we had imagined from the beginning."
- Yves Doyon is a consultant working on creating a Living Lab in Sudbury.
Figure Adapted from Penny Evans et al. 2017. Living Lab Methodology Handbook. p.11
1. Original quote was in french. Accessed from Rivière-du-Loup au cœur de l'innovation mondiale by Radio Canada
Read Why a living lab might be the right approach for community and territorial innovation
Access Living Labs toolkits from the European Network of Living Labs
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