The EU’s renewed higher education agenda suggests ‘countering the growing polarisation of our societies and distrust of democratic institutions (and) calls on everyone -including higher education staff and students- to engage more actively with the communities around’. And further: ‘higher education institutions are not ivory towers, but civic-minded learning communities’ connected to their environment’. The ‘Community Learning for Local Change’ project is designed to address these challenges. Our consortium will develop, implement and test a new approach to promote creativity, entrepreneurial thinking and skills for designing innovation in close cooperation with the communities in which the universities are embedded. This will be achieved by two core activities: (1) Our ‘Community Innovation Labs’ will provide a transdisciplinary framework for students, teachers and the community to collaborate on issues that really matter locally. Our labs will allow for a multi-faceted understanding of what the local challenges are and thus provide students with a realistic analysis of the change potential. Social entrepreneurship is the guiding principle here, aiming at merging social, environmental and economic sustainability. (2) We will expand an existing online course on Social Entrepreneurship with a new component focussing on the start-up phase. This will happen in synergy with the ‘community innovation labs’ as starting points for co-creation and co-founding. Involving the community as equal partners in both our online and face-to-face learning activities will contribute to breaking up the ivory tower of academia. Our consortium is an equal partnership of four universities with four NGOs from the Social Entrepreneurship field. This constellation ensurces close linkage to the actual needs and realities of the social business sector. Our target groups are university staff and students, community stakeholders such as cultural representatives, educational institutions, sports, NGOs, policy, administration, local business associations and the typical community groups such as school students, the elderly, youth in general, ethnic groups, refugees or any group that is facing problems with participating equally in what our society has to offer. With this project, four university partners across Europe will built up community innovation labs as real-world labs and open up totally new ways of implementing Education for Sustainability, involving the community as equal partners in the entire learning process is a core new element of this approach. The project will deliver the following results: (1) Open educational resources 'From Business Idea to Start-Up' for Social Entreprises and a methodology for applying these resources in a learning context (2) Competence development of all participants involved in the emerging field of 'transformative competence', that is: systems thinking, anticipatory competence, normative competence, strategic competence. These are based on interpersonal competence, which is a precondition for joint action (ref: Wuppertal Institute) (3) 'Community Innovation Labs' - as a form of living labs - established at each university location (4) A publication of the methodology applied for establishing and working with the Community Innovation Labs Since this project follows the methodical paradigm of a pedagogical action research cycle the learning activities will be implemented as early as possible and then follow a cycle of evaluation, improvement and repeated practical implementation. In doing so, it can be assured that the actual target groups have enough possibilities to evaluate the activities and necessary improvements can still be implemented within the lifecycle of the project. Therefore, development, implementation, evaluation and revision are seen as one process package that is closely interrelated. The overall goal of developing higher education institutions into ‘civic-minded learning communities’ will be sustained by the local ‘Community Innovation Labs’. The labs should continue as self-standing units that are jointly owned by the community members who contribute to it, including the university staff and the students (who are periodically changing). We call this the ecosystem for social entrepreneurship.
The EU’s renewed higher education agenda suggests ‘countering the growing polarisation of our societies and distrust of democratic institutions (and) calls on everyone -including higher education staff and students- to engage more actively with the communities around’. And further: ‘higher education institutions are not ivory towers, but civic-minded learning communities’ connected to their environment’. The ‘Community Learning for Local Change’ project has been designed to address these challenges. Our consortium has developed, implemented and tested a new approach to promote creativity, entrepreneurial thinking and skills for designing innovation in close cooperation with the communities in which the universities are embedded. This has been achieved by two core activities: (1) Our ‘Community Innovation Labs’ provide a transdisciplinary framework for students, teachers and the community to collaborate on issues that really matter locally. Our labs allow for a multi-faceted understanding of what the local challenges are and thus provide students with a realistic analysis of the change potential. Social innovation is the guiding principle here, aiming at merging social, environmental and economic sustainability. (2) We have expanded an existing online course on Social Entrepreneurship with a new component focussing on the start-up phase. This happened in synergy with the ‘community innovation labs’ as starting points for co-creation and co-founding. Involving the community as equal partners in both our online and face-to-face learning activities has greatly contributed to breaking up the ivory tower of academia. Our consortium is an equal partnership of four universities with four NGOs from the Social Entrepreneurship field. This constellation ensurces close linkage to the actual needs and realities of the social business sector. Our target groups were university staff and students, community stakeholders such as cultural representatives, educational institutions, sports, NGOs, policy, administration, local business associations and the typical community groups such as school students, the elderly, youth in general, ethnic groups, refugees or any group that is facing problems with participating equally in what our society has to offer. Within this project, all four university partners across Europe have built up community innovation labs as real-world labs and opened up totally new ways of implementing Education for Sustainability, involving the community as equal partners in the entire learning process. The project has delivered the following concrete results (1) Open educational resources 'From Business Idea to Start-Up' for Social Entreprises and a methodology for applying these resources in a learning context. The course has been developed and conducted twice. All learning materials are available online. (2) Competence development of all participants involved in the emerging field of 'transformative competence', that is: systems thinking, anticipatory competence, normative competence, strategic competence. These are based on interpersonal competence, which is a precondition for joint action (ref: Wuppertal Institute). (3) 'Community Innovation Labs' - as a form of living labs - established at each university location plus one NGO partner's location in the Carpathian Mountains (4) A publication of the methodology applied for establishing and working with the Community Innovation Labs. This output also presents each lab in detail. Since this project has followed the methodical paradigm of a pedagogical action research cycle the learning activities have been implemented as early as possible and then followed a cycle of evaluation, improvement and repeated practical implementation. In doing so, it was assured that the actual target groups have enough possibilities to evaluate the activities and necessary improvements can still be implemented within the lifecycle of the project. Therefore, development, implementation, evaluation and revision are seen as one process package that is closely interrelated. The overall goal of developing higher education institutions into ‘civic-minded learning communities’ will be sustained by the local ‘Community Innovation Labs’. The labs will continue as self-standing units that are jointly owned by the community members who contribute to it, including the university staff and the students (who are periodically changing). We call this our ecosystem for social innovation. The pandemic had of of course some impact on our activitities. What we missed most are the on-site international workshops planned for the second and third project years. We know from earlier cooperations that getting international teams into a community setting has a lot of positive impact on both the learners and the community. Working digitally with the communities was also a challenge during lockdown periods. But despite all the pitfalls, we managed well overall.