The Origin of Spaces – innovative practices for sustainable multidisciplinary clusters Erasmus Project

Project Title

The Origin of Spaces – innovative practices for sustainable multidisciplinary clusters

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for adult education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2014

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Enterprise, industry and SMEs (incl. entrepreneurship); Environment and climate change; Research and innovation

Project Summary

As the current socio-economic and ecological challenges might be more than a temporary situation, innovative, positive action must be taken now to address this and create new solutions. We believe that sustainable multidisciplinary clusters and their orientation towards ecological transition, are one important approach for a responsible answer to the present needs of our society. In our experience, they are innovation labs, incubators of new ways of working, living and acting for the co-creation of sustainable communities. Therefore, the main aim of this project is to work in partnership for development and implementation of innovative practices in the field of creation and management of sustainable multidisciplinary clusters.

Partners were 4 organisations that manage innovative clusters, collaborative places including coworking spaces – Association Les Darwiniens for Darwin Eco-system (Bordeaux, France), hACERIA Ateak for ZAWP (Bilbao, Spain), LX Factory with Coworklisboa (Lisbon, Portugal), Rojc Alliance for Social Centre Rojc (Pula, Croatia) The London Borough of Lewisham and Capture Art and Creative projects Ltd. 2 partners that represent cooperation between local stakeholders and enterprises willing to develop similar places.
So far all of the collaborative clusters and coworking spaces were operating in isolation from each other. This project has allowed to bring all their knowledge, skills and experience together in an innovative way, fostering a concrete network between them and enabling all of this information to be freely shared with others.
During the project period different co-creation methods and creative approaches (design thinking, de Bono method,…) were used to present innovative models in the following 5 project scopes:
1.ecological know-how,
2.participatory governance,
3.co-working,
4.social entrepreneurship skills
5.Local partnership.
Concrete results of the project are the intellectual outputs: Applied research and Online Educational Toolbox – ‘hands on’ tool based on tried and tested methods and experience that can be used by the public who want to create similar coworking spaces, third places, collaborative spaces or improve work of present one. For the creation of both intellectual outputs, we used a collaborative framework for the gathering of information and as a continuous process we included peer to peer learning. For the creation of our applied research we combined both academics and creative professionals to work together in an international team. During the creation of the toolbox we will use learner generated approach to its content with internal testing by a small team of individuals from the partnership to measure and test the content. The toolbox was inspired by new digital methods and open source resources. Our intellectual outputs have an open source access :
http://toolbox.originofspaces.com/

Presentation projet : https://fr.slideshare.net/ChristiaanWeiler/the-origin-of-spaces-project-outline

There are 3 main target groups for our toolbox : a) internal users, members from the partner organisations, b) external users, persons or organisations that need know how, with the primary aim of creating a collaborative place or participating in an existing one, c) local stakeholders who are the most capable of driving this kind of initiative into existence and need research and a broader inside view for the actions they want to support or develop.
We participated in peer to peer learning with co-creation of intellectual outputs – participating in mobility and local activities leaded by Research and Toolbox teams.

Different project activities were used to reach final project results: six transnational meetings attended by 105 participants, 3 types of joint staff events with a total of 53 participants: 5 study visits were organized to support creation of Research, 5 bilateral & 1 multilateral training course and 5 assistantship periods with discussion workshops which supported creation of Toolbox. Intellectual outputs were created by 2 international teams. For dissemination of the project results we organized 5 multiplier events: 4 small local dissemination events and one Final big Conference, on which we had more than 350 attendants in total.
Our project brought together local actors within a common framework improving social entrepreneurship and gaining support from stakeholders, especially city councils and regional authorities, with an impact on local policy towards ecological transition.
The other benefit of this project has been to improve the skills of the participants, able today to share their expertise through trainings and workshops, using creative and agile methods of working, with the digital toolbox as a support. The final event has generated the creation of a network of 25 collaborative spaces having the same values in the Bordeaux Metropole area.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 444203,13 Eur

Project Coordinator

Les Darwiniens & Country: FR

Project Partners

• LxFactory
• capture art and creative projects ltd
• Savez udruga Rojca
• Haceria arteak
• LONDON BOROUGH OF LEWISHAM