Third ULALABS workshop hosted by the University of Twente: fostering co-creation and collaborative learning for Sustainable and Inclusive Urban Future

On March 5th, 2025, the University of Twente hosted the third local ULALABS workshop, further expanding the project's engagement with local ecosystems across Europe.

Following successful workshops in Barcelona and Linköping, this event brought together representatives from the Municipality of Enschede, the University of Twente, local living labs, and a civic initiative to explore how collaborative learning and participatory approaches can address pressing urban challenges.

The workshop started with a short presentation of the main insights of the first year of the project. The presentation was followed by an active exercise following the structure used in Barcelona and Linköping. To wrap up, we highlighted the next steps of the project.

The discussions centred not only on the challenges faced by the different initiatives but also on the development of courses and training programs tailored to the local needs of the Twente region, focusing on themes such as citizen participation in disadvantaged communities, water management, digitalisation and socioeconomic inequalities.

Participants shared experiences, identified knowledge gaps, and co-designed potential educational formats that could support more inclusive and sustainable work of Urban Living Labs.

The workshop’s atmosphere was highly collaborative and productive, with participants actively engaging in both digital and physical formats. While a Miro board was used for mapping ideas, a hard paper canvas was also provided to help visualise the navigation on the digital platform. This highlighted the importance of ensuring accessibility in digital tools to engage diverse groups effectively.

The insights gained from this workshop will contribute to the broader ULALABS project and are especially important in the development of the Learning Toolkits and Syllabus.

The workshop also constituted a good opportunity to strengthen the local network of living labs and civic collaborations while connecting them to the other European partners of the project.

Stay tuned for more updates as we continue fostering co-creation and shared learning for more inclusive urban futures!

You can learn about the Enschede, University of Twente, the regional innovation ecosystem and selected labs analysis in our publication ´The Emerging Lab of Labs: Practices and Experiences of European Urban Experimentation Spaces´ here.