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Reviewing the Conference on the Open Laboratory of Imagination

Around 250 people attended the international conference “An open laboratory of imagination in Maggiore Square”, held in Bologna (Italy) on the 26th of January 2017 (news item in Italian available here).

Around 250 people attended the international conference “An open laboratory of imagination in Maggiore Square”, held in Bologna (Italy) on the 26th of January 2017 (news item in Italian available here).

The city of Bologna, among the most active Italian hubs in open innovation and citizen involvement, is currently developing an Open Lab (Laboratorio Aperto) to co-creatively test new solutions in/for the city. The Laboratorio will be opened in 2018. In this Living Lab all citizens and especially young people can learn co-creative methodologies and develop new professional skills to be used when working with local public institutes, schools, private companies. During the conference the Open Lab project has been publicly discussed for the first time. Several international experts have been called to reflect upon the role Labs can have in urban regeneration processes.

Artur Serra, Vice-President of ENoLL and Deputy Director of i2CAT, put forward the experience of Barcelona and Catalonia in regenerating urban spaces through Living Labs, and overviewed the role of ENoLL as key platform connecting Living Labs all over Europe and beyond. He defined the conference as “a great event” and fostered a stronger collaboration between the Laboratorio Aperto di Bologna and ENoLL, possibly going towards a Latin Model of Innovation as suggested by Patrizia Asproni during the conference. Artur Serra revealed that cities and regions are now beginning to understand that they are subjects of innovation and not only places where innovation happens. In this context Italy and Spain are full of cities and regions that can take advantage of this new model, based on ICT-supported social innovation. This process is already up and running as proved by the recent opening of 10 Open Labs in Emilia Romagna, Bologna’s region (read more here in Italian). Similar positive experiences are also traceable in other Italian regions like Puglia, Sicilia and Piemonte, with Living Labs popping up in several cities to develop new products and services in a quadruple helix environment. 

Paolo Aversano

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The European Network of Living Labs (ENoLL) is the international, non-profit, independent association of benchmarked Living Labs.

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