The Living Lab brings cross-sector stakeholders together for local solutions
Exeter, UK
Pivot Projects have engaged with the Global Systems Institute at the University of Exeter to establish a Living Lab to support students with their studies by focussing on ‘live’ sustainability and resilience challenges, and to facilitate the emergence of a cross-sector collaboration for the region to tackle these challenges in and around Exeter.
The Exeter Living Lab will help people use systems tools to co-design solutions that might lead to a greener, fairer recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic in line with Exeter’s Net Zero plan and well-being ambitions. A Living Lab is a virtual place where people from various backgrounds and disciplines come together to address local problems and aspirations through a collaborative system approach. The Living Lab will be used as an open innovation platform for local decision makers, organisations and communities; encouraging collaboration to identify local problems and create, prototype and validate solutions. Technical expertise from the Pivot Projects team of global experts are available to support the Exeter Living Lab group in identifying new solutions to meet the region’s aims.
Since the establishment of the Exeter Living Lab in January 2021, a series of key milestones have been achieved, including the of training members to use Pivot Projects systems tools such as KUMU mapping and the creation of an Exeter systems map. The Exeter systems map was created in collaboration with community members and experts from across the region; these groups met during various workshops to share local knowledge and identify relationships between key areas of knowledge.
