On January 31, 2025, ULALABS hosted the webinar “The Emerging Lab of Labs – Activities, Experiences, and Outcomes of the First Year of the Project.” The session brought together experts and practitioners from academia, research, business, public administration, and civil society, fostering an international dialogue on urban experimentation spaces and learning communities.
The event opened with remarks from Niall Power, ECIU University Director, who highlighted how ULALABS aligns with ECIU's vision of creating spaces for co-creation to solve social and economic challenges that require multidisciplinary approaches.
“Moving beyond traditional learning models through innovative combinations of education, research, innovation and service to our society is essential to shaping a resilient and more sustainable future," he stressed.
The webinar featured key speakers and coordinators from the four university partners of the ULALABS project:
Konstantinos Kourkoutas, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (ULALABS Coordinator)
Tina-Simone Neset, Linköping University
Fabio Hernandez Palacio and Anders Riel Müller, University of Stavanger
Ana Mafalda Madureira, University of Twente
The session focused on key insights from ULALABS’ first-year findings, particularly on the role and impact of urban experimentation spaces. It included a presentation of the recently published report, “The Emerging Lab of Labs: Practices and Experiences of European Urban Experimentation Spaces.”
This publication, resulting from extensive baseline research, includes a literature review and findings from regional ecosystems on urban experimentation spaces. It highlights key insights from 12 case studies of diverse urban experimentation spaces across the four ECIU partner regions. This report provides insights into promising practices, structures, and experiences of urban experimentation spaces, their role in accelerating sustainable innovation, and their function as arenas for collaborative learning. [Read the full publication here.]
Future Vision: Towards a Distributed Living Lab
A key highlight of the discussion was the Future Vision for a Distributed Living Lab, presented by Ana Mafalda Madureira. The ULALABS project envisions a meta-lab model, where diverse urban experimentation spaces across ECIU partner regions are interconnected, forming a collaborative, challenge-driven ecosystem. This model aims to enhance knowledge exchange, research, and innovation capabilities, while ensuring that living labs remain responsive to societal and environmental challenges.
The distributed living lab concept is not just about creating more experimentation spaces, but rather about integrating existing ones into a coordinated learning community. This approach would enable transdisciplinary collaboration, shared learning opportunities, and joint problem-solving, ensuring that innovations are scalable and impactful across different regional contexts. Participants were invited to contribute their perspectives on what is needed to foster cross-context learning, with key themes emerging around trust, openness, and inclusivity.
Learning Communities: Building a Culture of Reflexive Learning
Expanding on this vision, Anders Riel Müller presented the ULALABS approach to Learning Communities. Unlike traditional knowledge-sharing networks, ULALABS seeks to develop mutual learning communities where participants engage in reflexive learning processes—meaning they critically assess and adapt their practices based on shared experiences. This approach shifts the focus from simple knowledge exchange to the transformation of practice, ensuring that learning leads to real-world impact.
Participants were also encouraged to reflect on their motivations for joining a learning community, with key drivers including access to resources, collaboration opportunities, and engagement in meaningful societal change. Through this initiative, ULALABS aims to create sustainable connections between experimentation spaces, fostering long-term impact beyond the project’s timeline.
The webinar encouraged interactive participation through live polling and discussions, gathering insights from attendees on what is needed to support transdisciplinary learning across living labs. Ideas such as fostering trust, ensuring fairness, and maintaining open communication channels emerged as critical factors for success.
The ULALABS project will continue its work through, among the others:
Local workshops in each partner region (Feb–Mar 2025)
A multiplier event in Enschede (May 2025)
Participation in the ECIU University Conference in Trento (June 2025)
Pilot projects launching in Summer 2025
Additionally, ULALABS will develop a learning communities roadmap, a strategic challenges board, and learning toolkits to facilitate ongoing collaboration.
For more updates and to join the conversation, visit www.ulalabs.eu and follow the project on social media using #ULALABS.
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