>>BAUHAUS MEETS THURINGIA - THE MOBILE PARTICIPATION LAB<<
The aim of the project is to strengthen the university's exchange with local and regional civil society and to address current issues for teaching. The aim is to create a multifunctional, mobile setting that can be used to implement projects at learning locations outside the campus. All participants will engage in workshops with participatory approaches and develop special methods.
Sponsored by the "Stiftung für Innovation in der Hochschullehre": stiftung-hochschullehre.de/projekt/moplab/
If you are interested in a Cooperation please contact us!
In the summer semester there will be a seminar in cooperation with the chair of social science urban research under the direction of M.Sc. Anton Brokow-Loga. The mobile participation lab will be used for the first time with the students in Weimar and in the region. We are also looking forward to exciting impulse lectures and workshops with actors from the participatory practice. In the region we will prepare projects with cooperation partners or even already implement them. A special highlight will be a network meeting, where both uni-internal and especially uni-external partners from the region are invited to network with each other to find out what we could do together. Preferably with our mobile setting, of course!
It was great to be able to invite to a first small party and to celebrate the days of hard work together. Despite the semester break, some people came to see the progress of the construction. It was nice to hear that some people were interested in using the vehicle. So we should think about a booking platform as soon as possible. We still don't have a name, but we had a great afternoon together! We already have a lot of anticipation for the next semester. Let's see what will be created there! We are also looking forward to further inquiries and ideas on how the Mobil could be used in the region.
Two weeks of intensive building are behind us. The construction team consisting of 6-11 students, 2-3 people from the Construclab collective, Grit Koalik (drawing documentation) and the three-person coordination team has screwed, sawed, painted, etc. quite a bit. Now the trailer - which can be completely disassembled with a few hand steps - is on campus waiting to be used! After an introductory class at the wood shop and an examination of the planned building design, they got started. Thanks go to the staff at the university's workshops for their assistance with the craftsmanship of the design. Many of the students had no experience at all with tools and the like, but the result is impressive! We are looking forward to the topping-out ceremony, where we will celebrate the next phase with interested parties!
After interesting discussions on campus about current issues and the opportunity to test the prototype for the first time, we are now moving on: Next Monday we will start to develop the prototype further and build the next stage together with CONSTRUCTLAB. We always meet at 10 am in the wood workshop. At 12 o'clock we go to the cafeteria for lunch or cook ourselves. At 4 pm we always end the day. We invite you to drop by at any time!
From 23.1-1.2 the Bauhaus University Weimar was occupied by students. We tried to use the energies (demanding participation) and to collect moods with the prototype of the mobile participation lab in order to find out how we as a team, but also as a new tool of the university, can participate/support here. Above all, we were interested in the question of what the next step after the occupation might look like. How do those involved envision this required "space for exchange at eye level"? What should it be able to do? How will decisions be made there? Who organizes it? In the summer semester, exciting excursions to the cooperation partners in Thuringia await us. We are curious to see what will happen on campus at the same time.
From January 16 to 19, the compact week of the mobile participation lab took place in the cafeteria foyer and in the M18. The goal was to evaluate the impulses of the kick-off event, to develop them further and to translate them into a prototype for a mobile setting. We chose the cafeteria foyer because both teachers and students come there to eat and thus have the opportunity to get involved. However, it was already noticeable that many of the people were in delivery phases and had little capacity to get involved during the lunch break. We tried to make the best of the situation: First, we filtered out the important key points and discussed the existing statements and sorted them accordingly. Interested people were able to join us again and again through the public working group and leave their impulses. On Monday and Tuesday we worked very much on the conceptual side, and then on Wednesday and Thursday we started building a prototype. The system we came up with (with the help of Alexander Römer from CONSTRUCTLAB) is boxes of different sizes that can be connected to each other with tension belts in such a way that a suitable shape is always created, depending on requirements. So compact, or large etc.... With this we rolled around the campus as a test drive to see what the response was like. We have already had a few interesting conversations. Another advantage of this modular design is that the mobile can still be further developed in the coming semesters. On the digital project pinboard, university-internal persons can find the process presentation and the results so far. The prototype is currently located as an information table in the entrance area of Amalienstrasse 13. The time before the real construction workshop (6.-17.3) we want to do more campus actions to draw attention to the project and to inspire a few more to participate. Matching the occupation of the students and the problems/demands that become visible from it. Maybe we will be able to pick up more impulses for the next steps. The team is already looking forward to the talks!
From 16.01.-19.01.23 the compact week of the mobile participation lab will take place. A detailed schedule and the venue will follow. Here, the impulses of the kick-off event will be taken up and further developed. Due to the workshop format as the first course with 3 ECTS, students can already get involved in the project development. Interested teachers and cooperation partners are to be invited to shape the summer semester 2023 in more detail. Different working groups will try to find answers to the above mentioned questions. At the end of the week, we want to be much more concrete about how the project will proceed. Above all, we want to find out together how the mobile setting should look and function and develop the first prototypes. During the semester break we could build the prototype and test it during the summer semester.
On Dec. 16, 2022, the kick-off workshop was held from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. in the beautiful Van de Velde Building. The sun shone into the large room with the participatory parkour. About 60 people dropped by within the time window to talk to us about the questions that were actually in the room. Each question had been given space on a bulletin board. People who were unable to come were able to answer the same questions via a digital bulletin board. A highlight was the punch booth at the open space pavilion on campus. Here, those who were on campus were enticed to participate with a hot beverage. By the end of the event, the bulletin boards were well filled and much more tangible. We are now preparing the next format in week 3. A compact week to become even more concrete together. Invitation follows!
ALL students, teachers and employees of the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar are invited to participate in the mobile participation lab of the university!
We would like to find out together...
... what the mobile project is called?!
... which tasks it has?!
... what structures it needs?!
... how and where it will be built?!
... which places/ project cooperations are interesting?!
... what we still want to ask ourselves?!
During this period, a participatory parkour will be set up in room HP05 in the Van-de-Velde-Building, inviting you to drop by (even if you only have a short time) to find out more about the project and add your own impulses. The organizers of the project will be available for questions and suggestions. Besides nice conversations and information for the head, there will also be treats for the belly.
Under the title of the project, some of you may already have a picture in your head. See a mobile meeting space, a moving exhibition van, a pop-up pavilion.... Others might have no idea what "participation" means at all. The topic area around participation and co-creation is quite complex - as one can guess from the current discourses on the university campus. Informing everyone, for example, is not that easy... We noticed that, too, when we wrote an info mail to EVERYBODY and then apparently quite a few were not in the distribution list. Exactly in this exciting time a "mobile participation lab" is to be developed, which is to support the teachers and the students of the university to be able to deal with current questions together, directly and actively in order to find solutions. Originally to go off campus...
We are excited about what will develop with your help and look forward to the joint design process!
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