The first online study visit to the Social Innovation Laboratory was dedicated to the revitalization, neighborhood centers of the Marina and UrbanLab.
Every year at the turn of June and July, an international consortium of 5 universities (Aalborg, Lincoln, Lisbon, Paris and Warsaw) organizes an online summer school for Advanced Development in Social Work students (https://socialworkadvances.org/ ). It consists of 16 social work practitioners who are trained to work in the field of international social work during their master’s studies.
Social Innovation is the theme of this year’s summer school with students and professors from Hong Kong, Ukraine, China, Georgia, Egypt, Libya, Germany, Ghana, Trinidad and Tobago, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Uganda, the Philippines, Japan, Poland and the United States.
During the online “classes” in this year’s program, the selection of speakers was made in order to show students organizations of different scope that implement programs in the area of “social innovation”.
The Social Innovation Laboratory was invited to conduct the lectures, as an institution that implements programs of a city-wide range, in which every inhabitant is the recipient and creator. Where the activities very often concern a specific place and locality.
The idea of “Think globaly act localy” resonates in each of the cultural environments, which are linked by the online summer school program. The Laboratory was also invited as an organization operating within the budget and administration of the city, yet working on innovations in the structure of bottom-up initiatives. .
The presentation of the Social Innovation Laboratory was led by Katarzyna Ziemann, Deputy Director of LIS, on-line on Wednesday 1st July.
The first part was a presentation of the Social Innovation Laboratory as an organization realizing and implementing innovative solutions, meeting social challenges, social expectations and showing the spectrum of LIS activities and its role in the city and a short discussion of the implemented programs and projects. The basic programs are: Revitalization-GdyniaOdNowa, Civic Budget, Network of neighborhood centers – Marina, Youth Innovation Center – Exchange Plant and UrbanLab.
Presented projects: Social and Professional Activation System in Gdynia, Development of Social Services in Gdynia, Revitalization of Social Services – Gdynia OdNowa, Social Innovation Incubator.
The second part is a detailed story about the activities of a specific program and the social innovations that are developed in it – UrbanLab. The UrbanLab was presented by Monika Chabior, Magda Żółkiewicz and Magda Dębna.
UrbanLab Gdynia is a three-year implementation experiment involving testing the urban lab concept adapted to Polish conditions and supporting its pilot implementation in two Polish cities – Gdynia and Rzeszow. It identifies needs and problems, and then seeks innovative ways of solving them in an open formula of dialogue and cooperation with the residents.
The pilot concept is implemented in cooperation with the Ministry of Funds and Regional Policy, under the Technical Assistance Operational Programme 2014-2020, co-financed by the Cohesion Fund.
UrbanLab was chosen to be presented at the summer school on-line because of its innovative program and activities with residents as well as officials and institutions involved in creating social life of cities in response to defined challenges (in 2019. – participation, in 2020 – adaptation to climate change and urban challenges related to the COVID-19 pandemic).
The online meeting was an opportunity to exchange knowledge and conclusions resulting from the practice and implementation of programmes and projects.
It was also an opportunity to share experience in creating and implementing social innovations or running the so-called living labs, of which our Gdynia UrbanLab is an example.
