The Living Summer School is an annual informal education program held in Kortrijk, Belgium that brings together 30 multidisciplinary European and local young people to lead experiments in territorial innovation. Through collaboration with local partners, students design and implement sustainable initiatives in the urban and rural areas of Southwest Flanders with the goal of nurturing a territorial mindset as a catalyst for innovation.
Regional
Belgium
Kortrijk, Belgium part of the Eurometropolis region, in collaboration with a consortium of members from France, Italy and the Netherlands.
It addresses urban-rural linkages
It refers to other types of transformations (soft investment)
Yes
ERASMUS
The Action Type we receive funding from is KA154-YOU - Youth participation activities, we successfully applied to the Round 2 of 2022.
No
Yes
As a representative of an organization, in partnership with other organisations
Name of the organisation(s): Bolwerk (Living Summer School) Type of organisation: Non-profit organisation First name of representative: Elena Last name of representative: Falomo Gender: Prefer not to say Nationality: Italy Function: Project Coordinator Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Spinnerijstraat 105 Town: Kortrijk Postal code: 8500 Country: Belgium Direct Tel:+39 348 873 4221 E-mail:elena@livingsummerschool.com Website:https://livingsummerschool.com/
URL:https://livingsummerschool.com/ Social media handle and associated hashtag(s): https://www.instagram.com/livingsummerschool/?hl=en
URL:https://www.bolwerk.be/ Social media handle and associated hashtag(s): https://www.instagram.com/bolwerk.be/?hl=en
URL:https://www.startatk.be/ Social media handle and associated hashtag(s): https://www.instagram.com/startatk/
URL:https://eiland.design/ Social media handle and associated hashtag(s): https://www.instagram.com/eiland.collective/
The Living Summer School (LSS) is a free annual informal education program that brings together European and local young people to lead multidisciplinary experiments in territorial innovation. The program is held in Kortrijk, Belgium and through collaboration with local partners, students design and implement sustainable initiatives in the urban and rural areas of Southwest Flanders with the goal of nurturing a territorial mindset as a catalyst for innovation.
The program employs collaborative and experiential learning methods to promote a sense of shared responsibility. Every year, research is conducted on multifaceted social and climate challenges faced by local partners, including NGOs, policymakers, and private companies. Participants are then encouraged to work in teams to address these geography-specific challenges in collaboration with local communities and partners. The outcomes of the co-creation process are shared with local decision and policymakers.
Initiated in response to the urgent need for swift, effective action to address climate issues within realistic social models, LSS brings together motivated young people and influential stakeholders to create an educational setting that supports climate and social agency.
The project is developed collaboratively by three organizations: Bolwerk, Start@K, and The Eiland Collective. Together, they are committed to addressing the complex social and geographic challenges facing their communities through a combination of creative, entrepreneurial, and design thinking.
LSS is an Erasmus-certified informal training program and collaborates with a European Consortium of partners to devise its yearly curriculum. It is also a member of the New European Bauhaus’ Transformation of Places of Learning and of the LINA Architectural Platform & Community.
The program aims to promote dialogue and experimentation on sustainable living models for communities and non-human stakeholders with a European breath.Key objectives include:
Building a sustainable community:Each edition of the LSS welcomes new individuals and links past participants, partners, lecturers, and facilitators to a community that supports dialogue and peer learning around sustainability.
Encouraging youth-led policy-making on sustainability:The LSS concludes every edition with a roundtable to pass on the learnings of the participants to local, regional, and national policymakers to inspire their decisional processes.
Researching and experimenting with new sustainable technologies and methods:The LSS encourages and supports research and experimentation with new sustainable technologies and methods as part of its educational outcome.
Networking and sharing knowledge with other sustainable initiatives:The LSS networks and shares knowledge with other European initiatives to support the growth and spread of territorial innovation.
Supporting sustainable transitions:Starting with the 2023 edition, the LSS will support partners in carrying out or scaling up the prototypes created by students to fully implement them over the coming years.
The LSS meets these objectives through its curriculum design, learning objectives, and outcomes, as well as through year-round activities of dissemination and divulgation.Our initiative is exemplary in its holistic approach to achieving sustainability, as it addresses not only environmental but also social and economic sustainability aspects. To achieve these objectives, the LSS initiative focuses on collaboration and co-creation with local partners to ensure the uptake of initiatives and to tailor them to the specific needs of the community. Furthermore, by involving students in the design and implementation of these initiatives, the LSS initiative aims to empower the next generation of leaders to take action.
The Living Summer School (LSS) initiative is committed to delivering a transformative experience for its participants through a carefully designed curriculum and learning environment. The key objectives of the LSS include:
Nurturing creativity and inspiration: The LSS program exposes participants to a wide-ranging curriculum that encompasses various disciplines, including art, design, innovation, and environmentalism, with the aim of inspiring them to view the world from multiple perspectives. The cultural offerings are curated to be intellectually stimulating, thought-provoking, and inspiring.
Fostering a sustainable community: The LSS encourages social interaction through events, activities, and opportunities for informal conversation and networking, with the goal of fostering a sense of belonging and creating an environment where participants feel comfortable sharing ideas, knowledge, and experiences. This leads to the formation of meaningful and lasting connections within the community of participants as well as with the broader LSS network.
Promoting a positive relationship with the territory: The LSS encourages cultural exchange between participants and the local community, as well as the beautiful environment and heritage of Kortrijk (UNESCO Creative City for Design). Through field trips and curated encounters with partners, students explore the urban-rural linkages and gain an understanding of the context and the fascinating layers of the Eurometropolis region.
In addition, the quality of the students' work has been acknowledged through its inclusion in notable events such as the Wonder Festival and the Venice Architecture Biennale as a LINA member.
In summary, the LSS is an exemplary initiative that offers an immersive and innovative experience that promotes cultural exchange in a supportive and safe environment. What sets the LSS apart is its close connection between participants and the territory, leading to exceptional outcomes.
The Living Summer School initiative is committed to fostering accessibility and inclusivity, as a European exchange opportunity open and accessible to all young people. To achieve this, our team implements key strategies including:
Advancing Diversity: In both participant and partner selection, we actively strive for representation from a wide range of backgrounds, including economic, educational, cultural, and gender diversity, engaging them in the design and implementation of the initiative.
Promoting Accessibility: We design the LSS with sensitivity to the needs and perspectives of diverse groups, and take proactive measures to remove any barriers that may prevent certain individuals from participating .
Expanding Opportunities: The LSS creates opportunities for marginalized communities to access resources and educational services that are often not available to them.
Sustaining Development: The LSS is dedicated to building capacity and leadership within under-served communities, promoting long-term sustainability and self-sufficiency, and inspiring a future that is more conscious of the planet and its inhabitants.
Encouraging Feedback: The LSS values continuous feedback from participants to improve their experience and immediately implements any necessary changes, integrating the feedback into our yearly cycle and also hiring previous participants within our organizational team.
To ensure accessibility and inclusivity, the LSS provides a fully funded experience, including education, accommodation, catering, and accessible transportation, at no cost to participants. The short duration of the LSS also enables young workers to participate without interrupting their careers. Our initiative sets itself apart with its exceptional inclusivity, offering a world-class experience at no cost, providing a safe space for exchange between participants, policymakers and local leaders, and continuously welcoming feedback to drive improvement.
The Living Summer School (LSS) prioritises the active engagement of citizens and civil society in its design and implementation. This is achieved through the involvement of local community representatives, such as residents, businesses, and government officials, in the planning and execution of the initiative. With a focus on bottom-up change, the LSS leverages the expertise of local leaders to bring grassroots innovation to the territory.
Throughout the year, the LSS gathers input from Kortrijk’s community members through meetings, interviews, and surveys to identify specific eco-social challenges and issues in the local area. This information informs the design of the program and the selection of projects and activities that will be undertaken. The LSS also promotes collaboration between participants and local partners to co-design outcomes and outputs.
In addition, the LSS opens its doors to citizens from the surrounding territory through open and free events, such as the final exhibition that welcomed more than 100 people on an opening night last year. The LSS also invites local citizens and civil society organizations to participate in the program, providing them with the opportunity to work alongside experts from various fields.
The LSS is focused on developing solutions that are tailored to the specific needs of the local community, while also being highly reproducible and transferable to other European communities through the LSS network of participants, alumni and educators. That’s why we work year-round in collaboration with our international partners to make sure that the chosen challenges, the guest speakers and partnering institutions include their local perspectives. This approach empowers young civil society members to learn about territorial innovation within the European values and Erasmus+ framework for youth participation, to bring change to their local community with an international perspective.
The LSS places a strong emphasis on stakeholder engagement at all levels in its design and implementation and this involvement is at the core of its success. At the local and regional level, the initiative engages community members, local organizations, policymakers, the private sector and universities to collaborate on the curriculum. Amongst them, of particular relevance are the “partners”, that work for the entirety of the summer school duration to co-design with the participants their interventions.This ensures that the program is tailored to the unique needs and resources of the local community, and that the participants’ outputs and outcomes are taken up and sustained by local stakeholders. Additionally, the LSS invites regional, national, and European speakers, guest lecturers, and facilitators to contribute to the educational experience.This links the program to European policies and priorities and fosters exchange on contemporary educational practices.This is part of the larger exchange that the LSS undertakes with consortium partners: Fablab Torino, ConstructLab and NHL Standen University, as well as part of its larger divulgation and research practice as members of NEB and LINA networks.Policy and decision-makers are also engaged in the conclusive event of the summer school, fostering a dialogue with participants and local partners, and promoting bottom-up policies that reflect territorial innovation. The program's compliance with Erasmus+ standards for European "youth participation activities" is ensured through involvement with our funder, JINT. Involvement of stakeholders at various levels (VLAIO, Start@K, LINA, NEB) provides funding and other resources for the LSS, ensuring its success and sustainability, as well as raising awareness of the program and its benefits and encouraging more people to participate.Overall, stakeholder engagement at all levels helps to make the LSS inclusive, responsive to community needs, and sustainable over the long-term.
The Living Summer School (LSS) is a multidisciplinary initiative that brings together individuals from a wide range of fields, including architecture, art, community-building, environmental science, policymaking, design, anthropology, innovation, and entrepreneurship.
In designing the initiative, each member of the LSS team brings their expertise from a specific field, such as culture and community building, innovation, urban planning and design. This interaction allows for the creation of a curriculum that is not only holistic and multidisciplinary but also that is daring and inclusive in its format.
The LSS’s interdisciplinarity is also represented by the networks of partners that collaborate in designing the yearly curriculum, some of our past and present collaborators include the chamber of commerce (VOKA), the municipality of Kortrijk, the university consortium (including UGhent and KULeuven), Leiedal (regional development agency), Designregio (UNESCO Creative City), amongst other. This collaboration ensures that students receive a comprehensive understanding of the territory they interact with through the perspective of diverse experts. Moreover, it fosters knowledge exchange amongst network members.
In the implementation phase, the students selected for the program come from diverse backgrounds such as journalism, economics, real estate, graphic design, and more, resulting in a rich exchange of ideas and perspectives through peer learning that leads to thoughtful, sustainable and beautiful outputs.
The LSS consortium values multidisciplinary collaboration internally and with other networks it belongs to (NEB, LINA). This is reflected in its dissemination and research activities, which involve cross-fertilization of methods, sharing of competencies and skills, and personnel exchanges. This integration of knowledge and perspectives from a wide range of fields adds unique value to the LSS initiative, making it an inclusive and sustainable program.
The Living Summer School (LSS) distinguishes itself as a leading program in the field of education. While traditional educational programs tend to emphasize classroom-based learning and theoretical knowledge, LSS prioritizes territorial innovation through an immersive and experiential approach. The concept of "territorial innovation" involves examining the geography surrounding us as a complex system comprised of various interrelated aspects such as social, ecological, political, historical, and cultural elements. By fostering an all-encompassing understanding of these layers through collaboration, students actively participate in the design and implementation of projects that have a real-world impact on their local communities. This approach cultivates the skills necessary for future leaders to drive sustainable innovation.
The program also places emphasis on hands-on and interdisciplinary collaboration, bringing together students and experts from a wide range of disciplines to foster a holistic and integrative approach. This circular approach is also reflected in the initiative’s design, that engages alumni and locals, allowing for a continuous funneling of knowledge that has led to momentous impact since 2020. The initiative has moved from creating small models to building full-scale prototypes that are taken up by stakeholders and the organising team has hired several alumni.
As part of its innovative approach, LSS focuses on rural areas and invites European students to discover new appreciation for often-undervalued and under-researched realities.
Finally, the program places a strong emphasis on the development of soft skills, such as teamwork, communication, and problem-solving, which are essential for success in today's job market and are often neglected in traditional educational programs. The LSS provides students with opportunities to hone these skills through real-world projects and interactions with diverse stakeholders.
The LSS serves as an exemplary educational model that can be replicated in other communities and organizations, demonstrating the potential for sustainable, community-led solutions to promote long-term ecological, economic, and social well-being.In fact, we’re actively working with members of our network to reproduce the LSS curriculum and experience in other geographies and contexts, as a Europe-wide modular format.
Particular elements that can also be replicated are:
Our methodologies and frameworks to facilitate teamwork, which we currently apply to facilitate collaboration amongst participants, stakeholders and partners, could be of value for participatory policymaking and co-innovation.
Our curriculum which mixes hands-on experiences and theoretical notions in a holistic and experiential learning experience, could be replicated in a university-level course or a workshop format.
The solutions designed by students in the past editions of the LSS could be of value to other beneficiaries interested in implementing solutions that promote ecology and society-centred innovation.
Our research on territorial innovation if diffused and divulged further could influence other initiatives in the creation of care-ful community-based interventions in other geographies that can encompass multiple layers of investigation.
The format for exchange with policymakers can be of value to other European youth participation activities and empower youngsters to engage and participate in local policymaking.
In general, other territories could benefit from replicating the Living Summer School by implementing its multidisciplinary approach to problem-solving, engagement of local stakeholders, hands-on learning, and emphasis on sustainable development. These elements could help to generate innovative solutions to local challenges that are tailored to the specific needs of the community, provide hands-on experience for students, and promote environmental stewardship.
The LSS utilises in its implementation approach for the educational offering hybrid, non-formal, project-based learning methods which incorporate reflection and feedback loops and emphasise teamwork and social learning. The program features a curriculum that changes annually to address emerging local challenges with a global aspiration. In our implementation methodology, our foundations are:
Teamwork and collaboration
Hands-on work and iterative design
Field trips and informal exchanges with locals and stakeholders
An exchange with local policy and decision-makers in a “fair” format to allow for an immersive understanding of participants’ interventions
Focus on territorial innovation
In addition, the design approach of the yearly LSS experience is a collaborative and iterative process that involves the participation of different stakeholders and the use of different tools and methods to generate innovative solutions for local challenges. This process includes the following steps:
Co-design of the summer school's curriculum through workshops, interviews, site visits, and meetings with alumni and stakeholders
An open call for participants, partners, and guest speakers to ensure inclusivity and representation
Execution of the program, typically including over 40 stakeholders and 30 students, with the addition of the organising team of alumni from the previous edition
Documentation of the program through the creation of a yearly publication and promotion through exhibitions such as Wonder Kortrijk or the Venice Architecture Biennale
Continuous feedback collection from stakeholders and participants through various channels to ensure responsiveness and perception of emerging needs.
In conclusion, the LSS methodology in both design and implementation is a collaborative iterative approach that responds at various levels to emerging needs to foster holistic education.
The Living Summer School (LSS) is dedicated to tackling global challenges by connecting them through systemic lenses to hyper-local issues that find solutions through the interventions of our participants. The address challenges include:
Climate Change: The impacts of climate change are far-reaching, affecting communities worldwide. The LSS seeks to mitigate the effects of climate change by promoting sustainable innovation, nature-based solutions, and community empowerment through LSS participants’ outputs.
Social Inequality: The root causes of social inequality are often local. To tackle this challenge, the LSS engages local and European stakeholders and youth, including marginalized groups, in the design and implementation of its initiative. This ensures that the solutions generated are relevant and have the support of those who will be affected by them. Additionally, the LSS fosters the adoption of innovative social and business models through collaboration among stakeholders and participants.
Sustainable Development: The LSS prioritizes sustainable development, which aims to meet present needs without compromising future generations. The initiative gives voice to young people and promotes dialogues with policymakers to drive tangible change.
Knowledge Sharing: The LSS works to break down the barriers of inaccessible knowledge in academia and the private sector. It encourages free access to personal and professional growth for its participants and actively documents and shares its experiences to promote the replicability and scalability of the LSS experience.
Future Skills: The LSS aims to empower young people with the necessary skills and competencies to lead in the rapidly changing world. It places a strong emphasis on multidisciplinary learning, teamwork, and the ability to work with complexity.
We have successfully executed two editions of the LSS. In 2021, the "Living Waterscapes" edition involved 11 students from 5 different countries and a network of more than 30 stakeholders in its design and implementation. The outcome of this edition was the creation of 3 nature-based solutions that leveraged the local ecosystem's services, one of which was adopted by our local partner as a blueprint for the future. Over 100 members of civil society attended the final event.
In 2022, the "Living Blocks" edition involved 24 students representing more than 12 countries and a network of over 55 stakeholders. The outcomes of this edition were 5 interventions, one of which was an innovative business model for our partner, W13, that was presented at their internal national congress. Over 30 policymakers attended the final exchange and the exhibition was visited by more than 200 members of civil society over 3 weeks. This edition also marked the integration of the LSS into Designregio's "Designers in Residency" program, by becoming the introduction to the territory for their 3 resident designers.
In July 2022, we secured 2-year funding from JINT (EU) as a Youth Participation programme, receiving recognition as an institution within the Erasmus+ network, allowing us to award participants with the YouthPass. In September 2022, we were presented as a new LINA member and will officially join this consortium in May 2023, participating in the Architecture Biennale. In December 2022, we received funding from VLAIO, to support the initiative throughout 2023.
We are currently undergoing the codesign phase, involving alumni and stakeholders, for the 2023 "Living Makeshift" edition. Our two-year plan includes the creation of 3 life-sized prototypes in 2023, with local partners and stakeholders monitoring and testing the prototypes to collect feedback between editions. In the 2024 edition, we aim to build our first set of full-scale permanent solutions.
The LSS contributes to the development of new competencies in the following ways:
Valuing Sustainability: LSS provides opportunities for participants to explore the importance of sustainability and understand the environmental and social implications of their actions.
Systems Thinking: LSS encourages participants to adopt a holistic and interdisciplinary approach to sustainability, allowing them to understand complex sustainability issues in a comprehensive manner.
Political Agency: LSS helps participants develop the skills and confidence to take action on sustainability, including advocating for policies and practices that promote sustainable development.
Futures Literacy: LSS fosters the ability of participants to envision and create sustainable futures, encouraging them to explore innovative solutions and think beyond existing paradigms.
