Living Labs have gained traction as a form of experimentation to support sustainability transitions. Here, experimentation refers to inclusive, real-life initiatives designed to promote system innovation through social learning among a variety of partners, including researchers, citizens, business and policy makers. They focus on sustainability knowledge creation and real-time application of the knowledge created.
One of the core activities of ENERGISE is to develop, deliver and evaluate 16 ENERGISE Living Labs (ELL) in eight European countries, involving a total of 320 households. The ELLs are different from conventional living labs, since the development of new technology is not the main focus. Rather, the aim is to develop new, more sustainable everyday practices together with households. Engaging households of different sizes, with different backgrounds and from different countries, we expect to find very different kinds of changes in practices. Through this co-inquiry process, we explore how change occurs in diverse practice cultures and develop tools to change particular everyday practices related to domestic thermal comfort and cleanliness.
The ELLs include a process to co-design the approach and methods, and to co-create knowledge together with the households, stakeholders and other experts involved in the project. The basic design of ELLs consists of six phases: ELLs start with (1) definition of the context – the social and material conditions underlying practices. The next step is (2) identifying interventions, where we co-design a set of potential changes in practices. In (3) the deliberation phase, we assess the baseline of energy use, and discuss and learn about the households’ practices, needs, concerns and expectations. In (4) the testing phase, households experiment with changing their routines. We track this process by monitoring households’ activities throughout the ELL, to observe the interconnections and potential rebound and spillover effects. After the testing phase, we arrange (5) a reflective meeting with households in which we discuss their experiences. The final phase of the ELLs focuses on (6) evaluation of the output, outcome and impact of the ELLs.
One of the core issues that the ELLs aim to test is the benefit of engaging households collectively. Because of this, our design involves running two ELLs in each country. One of these (ELLs 1) will engage households individually, whereas the other (ELLs 2) will include a component of collective deliberation, peer support and sharing of knowledge and insights. We expect these collective ELLs2 will also lead to wider diffusion of the new practices developed within the community (see the figure above: Basic design of two ENERGISE Living Labs).
The ENERGISE team are very excited because we will launch the ELLs in autumn 2018. At present, busy preparations are underway to engage households and stakeholders in eight countries. Our next newsletter will provide you with more information on how this is going, as well as our first experiences. We expect to learn a lot from our work together with households!
Eva Heiskanen and Senja Laakso, University of Helsinki