Historically Labelled Living Labs
Since its formation in 2006 ENoLL has labelled 440+ Living Labs. See the full list of Labelled Living Labs who are not active members of the network.
Aims
Bristol Living Lab is run by Knowle West Media Centre (KWMC), a UK based non-profit arts organisation with 20 years’ experience of working with communities and individuals to understand how creativity and digital technologies can be utilised to meet local needs.
Our Approach
We are based within the community of Knowle West, an area of approximately 5,500 households in the south of Bristol. Like communities in many cities, Knowle West ranks highly in government indices of multiple deprivation. Projects are commissioned by a wide range of government, academic, voluntary and public sector organisations, from local groups to national organisations, and KWMC is an active participant in European projects.
We are a community based ‘enabler-driven’ living lab: KWMC acts as a ‘broker’ between citizens and organisations, ensuring that each participant in a particular project is able to contribute their knowledge and experience. KWMC adopts an ‘action research’ approach, where continual reflection and evaluation are built into the working process, and this enables KWMC to be flexible and responsive to the changing needs of partners and communities.
We have a wide range of citywide, regional and international networks that we actively work with and take a ‘Commons’ Approach to sharing knowledge and learning. Whilst we work ‘hyper locally’ within our community we are committed to sharing what we do with an invitation to ‘adopt and adapt’ to suit your Living Lab context.
We have 3 organising themes:
Community Wealth Building
Ensuring the skills, know-how, changing narratives, and the economic, cultural and social change that we create, benefits the community and builds a Thriving neighbourhood. That wealth does not flow through without ‘sticking’ to the neighbourhood and benefiting residents.
Social Infrastructure
Social infrastructure refers to the physical places, spaces and organisations that shape our capacity to interact with one another and supports physical transformation and tangible change, linking to the Making.
Fair Transition
For us a fair transition is a set of practices that builds economic and decision making power in the neighbourhood – moving from extractive practices to a regenerative economy. This includes our approach to production and consumption being waste free and always environmentally aware. Our focus prioritises:
Creative and tech projects are clustered into portfolios that reflect these themes.
Projects
Examples of Bristol Living Lab projects include:
Since its formation in 2006 ENoLL has labelled 440+ Living Labs. See the full list of Labelled Living Labs who are not active members of the network.