1. Creating a European Community of Changemakers The project empowers young people to become active citizens and socially conscious initiators, and makes them part of an inclusive and growing cross-border community. By further expanding this European community (network), we increase the impact of the project. 2. Enriching and refining the educational model Together with young people, (local) partner organizations, and alumni (participants in previous summer schools), we refine our educational model through study visits, exchanging knowledge about methodologies within informal learning, hands-on experiences with informal learning, and sharing best practices. The Closing Conference also focused on innovations within and applications of informal learning through presentations by and knowledge exchange with Flemish and European actors. 3. Finding solutions to social and environmental challenges By tackling concrete and complex challenges during the summer school and providing young participants with the necessary skills, knowledge, methods, and techniques, they are encouraged and empowered to take initiative in their own region.
The Living Summer School (LSS) was founded in 2021 as a collaboration between Bolwerk and two recently graduated designers (Elena Falomo and Jadd Hallaj) who were then in residency in Kortrijk. From the beginning, the vision was to encourage young people to take initiative in tackling social and ecological challenges in their communities. The ingredients? Bringing together a diverse group of young participants (in terms of education, background, gender, location, etc.), creating an informal learning environment, collaborating in teams on a specific topic translated into a challenge for which a local Kortrijk (youth) organization was seeking a solution, and sharing knowledge through lectures, workshops, and peer-to-peer learning. After organizing three of these summer schools (LSS '21, LSS '22, and LSS '23), the Core Organizing Team (COT) felt the need to more clearly define and refine the educational model used, which centers on informal learning, so that it could be better shared and rolled out in other European regions and contexts. In other words, during these first three years, the LSS had been a positively received living lab, which the COT aimed to scale up into a model that was easily replicable.