Suara Cooperativa hosted this Saturday a meeting of international Living Labs, which began with a visit to the Social Digital Lab. This activity was part of the meeting of the European Network of Living Labs (ENoLL), of which Suara Cooperativa is one of the organizers. This took place in Barcelona from Wednesday to Saturday last week and was attended by 400 people.
Specifically, in the case of Saturday's activity, which was attended by about twenty representatives of Living Labs from the health, welfare and care sector, it included a visit to Suara Cooperativa's facilities, as well as a working session. Apart from different representatives of European and Spanish projects, there were also initiatives from Japan, Australia, South Korea and India.
One of the objectives of this day was to put the different experiences in contact with each other, so there was an activity in which representatives of the Living Labs were able to explain their projects to other people. In this way, this intense day of work served to promote cooperation and co-creation between the different participating Living Labs.
So far, within the framework of this meeting, alliances have been forged with a project in Helsinki, another in Brussels, and Suara Cooperativa has also been invited to a Living Labs meeting in Galicia.
Apart from this activity, Suara Cooperativa's headquarters also offered different working sessions and workshops on Wednesday, in which about forty people participated. This was the kick-off of the Open Living Lab Dys Barcelona 2023, organized by ENoLL, of which Suara is the only co-organizing cooperative. In the case of Wednesday, different issues were addressed such as what are the challenges of Living Labs, their sustainability or experienced in a real environment the different methods and existing co-creation tools.
"As the organizer of the conference, we hosted different working sessions at our headquarters. This has allowed us to make contact with Living Labs from all over Europe, which has allowed us to open the door to possible alliances with the aim of considering joint interstate projects," says Jordi Picas, Suara's Innovation Director.
On Thursday and Friday, Barcelona hosted conferences by international experts, as well as different workshops, which were a meeting point for the different Living Labs. The purpose of these labs is to provide innovative and technological responses to different social challenges. Therefore, in these two days, emphasis was placed on how Living Labs can be a strategic way in the green, digital and social transformation.
In addition, on Thursday evening, in the framework of a meeting of the ENoLL assembly, Suara Cooperativa received the official certification as a member of this network. In fact, it was already part of it since last year when it created the Social Digital Lab, which is the first incubator of startups specialized in the care sector in Catalonia.
