Apiteca: Community Buzz facilitates learning experiences to citizens with the aim to reconnect them with nature and build a new city model, taking sustainability, inclusion and aesthetics as key elements. In this project, led by the Jordi Rubió i Balaguer Library in Sant Boi de Llobregat, honeybees act as an inspiring learning tool to discover, cocreate and share ideas and knowledge. The overall aim is to empower the local community as advocates for the construction of a healthier city.
Local
Spain
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It addresses urban-rural linkages
It refers to other types of transformations (soft investment)
No
No
Yes
As a representative of an organisation
Name of the organisation(s): Biblioteca Jordi Rubió i Balaguer Type of organisation: Other public institution First name of representative: José Manuel Last name of representative: González Labrador Gender: Male Nationality: Spain Function: City Culture Councilor Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: C/ Baldiri Aleu, 6-8 Town: Sant Boi de Llobregat Postal code: 08830 Country: Spain Direct Tel:+34 936 30 97 60 E-mail:b.st.boillo.jrb@diba.cat Website:https://bibliotequesdesantboi.wordpress.com
Apiteca is transforming Sant Boi’s library to a place of experiential learning. The library plays a facilitator role for the assimilation of knowledge based on experience in a longlife term and formal learning space. Our project embraces a wide range of citizens, communities from all backgrounds, entities and groups: adults, young people and children, families, schools, high schools, civil society entities.
Communities in the library contribute to rethinking the city's urban spaces’ naturalization, with health and biodiversity as promoters of quality of life, being part of the construction of a more beautiful, healthier and greener city.
Apiteca aims to contribute to regenerate natural ecosystems and prevent loss of biodiversity while inviting the community to reconsider their relationship with nature from a life-centred perspective.
To do so, we’ve identified bees as an innovative learning tool to work from the One Health approach. Bees are the thread to learn and codesign new spaces and services that preserve health and nature with children, young people and communities engaged in the library
In this sense, the project raises awareness about coexistence with other living beings, their needs and how they are linked with ours.
Honeybees are a prime focus to develop a wide range of meetings, activities and workshops around: environmental health, climatology, sustainable architecture, sociology and social cooperation, circular economy, sensorization technology, gardening, arts, literature, history, photography.
Bees are also a meaningful tool to develop projects related to Apiteca, with civic engagement and participation approach and to co-create programmes and activities.
In the library, we have settled a beautiful area with four beehives located in one of the inner yards. We’ve also redesigned a part of the children's area to work around this topic to promote the basis for future learning interests and vocations.
Beekeeping
Co-creation
Shared knowledge
Inclusion
Biodiversity
In terms of sustainability, the project aims to promote the acquisition and production of open knowledge and the development of critical thinking about conservation and care of the city's natural resources, encouraging responsible consumption and also engaging a committed community to run Apiteca autonomously.
Furthermore, the honey produced by Apiteca’s bees is offered in the city’s food bank, providing a high-quality local product that can be enjoyed by many people.
In brief, the objective is to foster, through bees, citizen’s curiosity around environmental issues and facilitate learning about their impact on people’s health and their own future wellbeing. To achieve this, we have installed 4 beehives that are sensored to control weight, temperature and bees buzzing. These are connected to an app that offers instant insight into the status of the colony of honeybees: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmyPo-INwqo
This app can be openly consulted by anyone interested, and it's a useful tool that can be used in any research project. Close to the yard, there will be a TV set where library users will safely see bees' performance.
We are working to disseminate this project to be scaled up and replicated within the libraries network or in other places of learning with the aim to create green corridors for bees in the province of Barcelona.
In the mid-long term, we also envisage that beekeeping is incorporated into public art installations, such as sculpture gardens or interactive exhibits, to promote education and awareness about bees and their important role in the ecosystem and the urban environment.
The key objective of Apiteca in terms of aesthetics and quality of experience for people is to fulfil positive emotions by providing opportunities for people to connect with nature and learn about the process of beehives’ construction and honey production.
Additionally, we aim to enhance citizens' sense of belonging to the library and their community by beekeeping and promoting sustainable and environmentally-friendly practices.
To achieve this,we are designing a project to plant honey plants all around the city and distributing seeds between citizens to have these plants in their balconies and terraces. This movement around bees and honey plants it’s a motivation to maintain a greener city starting with our living space.
In a medium-long term, the Apiteca initiative envisages that urban beekeeping is integrated into our city’s landscape through the use of rooftop hives or community gardens, which can add a unique and visually pleasing element to the environment.
Overall, Apiteca can provide a wide range of benefits in terms of design, positive emotions, and change-behaviour impact. It is an exciting and engaging tool to connect people with nature, promote sustainable practices and improve physical and mental well-being in a unique and creative experience in a beautiful space.
Apiteca’s key objective in terms of inclusion is to promote community-based initiatives and education programs, which can reduce the barriers to entry for individuals and groups who may not have had previous access to educational opportunities.
The involvement of a diverse range of stakeholders in the decision-making aims to promote an inclusive governing system. This includes involving local communities, vulnerable people and people with disabilities in the planning and management of Apiteca’s initiatives.
Library infrastructure ensures the equipment is accessible and usable for people with disabilities providing ramps, we also have some adjustable software and devices that can help those who are visually impaired to read printed material or surf the web. In that sense, the Apiteca’s project objectives are:
-To provide access to information and ideas for all, while supporting formal and informal education, and promoting critical thinking development to all.
-To offer opportunities for creativity development among different target groups, to stimulate imagination, curiosity and empathy to living beings and ecosystem preservation.
-To give access to scientific knowledge as well as to enable participation in open science actions and proposals that are attractive and understandable for all
-To play a socially-binding and a facilitating role in the face of economic, societal and environmental challenges.
-To develop community meeting and relationship spaces by strengthening participation, co-creation and open culture activities around honey bees and their link with people’s health and the environment.
-To openly share all the community-generated content.
Apiteca motivates the dialogue between people with different levels of knowledge and experience, helping to break stereotypes, reducing social gaps and contributing to communities' commitment to well-being and education.
Despite being surrounded by industrial and logistics areas, one of Sant Boi's economic branches is still strongly linked to agriculture. Also, 60% of its territory is forest, agricultural and fluvial. The aim of the project is to reconnect with nature to benefit citizen’s health.
Apiteca seeks to empower citizens as defenders of the construction of a beautiful, greener and healthier city, strengthening their commitment to care for the environment and to promote cultural and social progress.
Apiteca facilitates a sense of community and shared responsibility, as well as educates about the importance of bees and their role in the ecosystem, it can also help to promote sustainable practices and encourage people to take an active role in protecting bees and their habitats.
The project is also transforming the library to a place to learn from shared and community-created knowledge. It broadens the options for our community to participate in resolving problems or worries that could globally affect, not only, the local citizens’ future but also other Europe's citizens' prospects.
By now, 227 people of all ages and from different backgrounds have already been involved in the Apiteca community by attending different activities and have been reconnected with nature through honeybees.
There are more than 50 people directly engaged and participating actively in the project implementation: beekeepers;“nature and bees fans”; environmental technicians and young students who are working on projects about the environment and bees.
For the project it’s critical to spread the buzz between the city's youngest, working together with Elementary and High Schools, because ultimately, as future’s adults they will be leading the fight for a fair, beautiful, sostenible, inclusive and greener society.
Overall, citizens and civil society involvement have a positive impact on both the initiative and the community, by promoting community development, education, and conservation eff
Apiteca’s first boost was given by The European Culture Foundation and Democratic Society through the Europe Challenge giving us tools, advice and the first funds to make the idea come true. The challenge sought to strengthen our position as an educational, inclusive, relevant, safe and open public facility and a place to solve local challenges by involving the knowledge of communities.
To strengthen citizenship’s commitment to environmental care through cooperative actions between citizens and the local government and in order to co-create beautiful, sustainable, and inclusive public spaces, at local level,we have engaged:
-Sant Boi de Llobregat City Council's Participation, Environment, Education, and Planning & Evaluation Departments.
Acting as project's planification and further development supporters, helping with citizenship engagement and promotion.
Also they will promote honey plant plantations in the city's green zones and balconies.
-La Rutlla, city’s entity linked to the preservation of cultural and natural heritage assets. They want to adequate a pond located in the children's area inner yard, redesigning it to get a functional educational space about pond life: insects, algae, pollinators and a local frog species, in danger of being extinct.
-Camps Blancs High School, technological study team. This 2023 they are planning to install a bee counter at one of the beehives' entrances.
-Benito Menni, Mental health care complex, Using Apiteca as a learning and therapeutic resource.
-Diputació de Barcelona Libraries' Central Services. To replicate the project in other public libraries.
National level:
Almeria’s University, monitoring organic contaminants presence on bees.(APIStrip)
2023 Future stakeholders:
Two entities working on environment care through beekeeping in two nearby natural parcs:
Mel·lifera (Montbaig)
Melvida (Collserola)
From its conception, the project has assured inter-institutional cooperation and networking involving citizenship with health,environmental, educational, social, cultural and economic agents.
Besides agriculture and horticulture, the project design and implementation envisages synergies between bees and beekeeping, with a variety of disciplines and knowledge fields, including:
Environmental health: studying the role of bees in pollination and their contribution to ecosystem health (i.e. green corridors creation, Asian Hornet plague fight)
Climatology: bees behaviour monitoring, to relate it with climate change, temperature and air quality.
Ecology: Ecologists can study the interactions between bees and their environment, including the effects of habitat loss and pesticide use on bee populations.
Sociology and social cooperation: circular economy, sustainable consumption patterns, cultural and historical heritage knowledge.
Sensorization and monitoring technology (Beep Platform app sharing; Bees counter (High school project)
Gardening (Butterfly garden; honey plants and seeds plantation campaign)
Beekeepers, educational agents as technology, sociology and history teachers, environmental civil servants as city’s environment technicians, forest rangers and people interested in all these themes have the opportunity to work together to develop and co-create new programmes, spaces and services. They can also share their knowledge and expertise through workshops, conferences, and other networking opportunities.
As an added value, Apiteca, as an open learning resource, contributes to encouraging critical thinking by revising the city’s urban spaces, pointing to culture, health and biodiversity as promoters of quality of life.
Our aim is to evolve to a new model of public library. We envisage the library as a “pilot ecosystem”, providing the necessary resources to create new knowledge and share information. We see the library as a facilitator for the assimilation of knowledge based on experience. A promoter of collaboration and alliances with the educational community. A supplier of social innovation resources for the development of critical thinking, research and community action.
We would like to develop the co-creation of new knowledge. Currently, “Apiteca” (beehives and beekeepers inside the library) is our Live Lab of creation, citizen science and social innovation to solve social challenges and encourage new vocations. Apiteca promotes being part of a driving force for social transformation and acts as an opportunity’s generator space.
Additionally, we are working :
- to promote meeting, socialisation, debate, exchange of ideas and experiential spaces.
- To promote the participation of community stakeholders.
- To share resources and knowledge openly.
- To spread democratic values and integration, inclusion, diversity and equal rights.
Following this model , we would like to become a basic resource, for citizens and communities, in the development of their lifelong learning process in order to help individuals to develop new skills and interests.
One of the main points of Apiteca is that it is replicable in other fields and institutions, the design of the project as well as the project itself.
Methodology: Design thinking is a mindset and approach to problem-solving and innovation anchored around human-centred design. MINDSHAKE
Technology: all the technological resources employed on the project are Open Data and open source, with that option we contribute to:
-Systematically capture data for scientific purposes by digitalisation and data collection. For example the European bee research project, B-GOOD.
-Modernisation of beekeeping by better informing beekeepers through digital tools. This helps the beekeeper to make decisions based on data and respond more quickly on the needs of the bees. Beekeepers can also cooperate with others through the app. We also hope to inspire young people to delve into the world of the bee.
-Conservation of nature by providing better care for our pollinators.
All the connections are with LoraWan technology (Low Range Wide Area), a protocol designed to wirelessly connect battery operated ‘things’ to the internet in regional, national or global networks. It is an open source to share data around the world.
We work strongly in citizen participation processes for the creation of interdisciplinary communities with common objectives: workshops, living labs, constructive discussions and activities.
Learning and co-creation: Work with citizens, all together to come solutions with new methodology, with an open mind attitude. Another objective is to disseminate the 2030 Agenda and the SDGs to bring the challenges of the planet to the public sphere and raise awareness of the importance of a sustainable future. The learnings and the objectives of Apiteca are directly associated with the Sustainable Development Goals and the 2030 Agenda.
The main methodology to arrive at the solution of our challenge was Design thinking, a process where life (nature and citizens) is in the centre (life-centred design). We searched for a challenge solution that was not focused on the problem itself. We needed a useful and innovative solution and believed that a life-centred approach inspired a meaningful and impactful answer. Why not a beehive inside the library could be a new widget for citizens to improve, learn and be aware about the importance of the bees to be more healthy, green and reconnect with nature? To arrive to the final result we followed the next steps:
-Understand the society challenges: Conducting research to gain an in-depth understanding of the needs, pain points, and goals of our society focusing on environment, health and biodiversity.
-Define the challenge: Clearly define the challenge that we wanted to solve, and make sure it is specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART).
-Ideate solutions: Generate a wide range of ideas and solutions to the problem. Encourage creativity and out-of-the-box thinking with workshops, citizen labs and meetings with stakeholders.
-Prototype: Create a prototype of the most promising solution. Apiteca, was the final prototype after the first months of hard work with our community.
-Test: Test the prototype with users to gather feedback and iterate on the design, designing activities for all ages like filmforum and formation with users and educational community.
-Implement: Once the design was validated and refined, we implemented the beehives in the library in order to measure its effectiveness, spread the project and design more actions to consolidate the enterprise.
During codesing and co-implementation phases, we have used online tools like Google Meet and Miro (pandemics) and face to face workshops and living labs with Sant Boi citizens (library users, students, associations, local politicians, and Council’s civil
Apiteca is working on information, education and knowledge acquisition and creation about environment, health, quality of life and land use issues. Challenges such as sustainability, food security and biodiversity loss are very similar to those citizens are facing in many locations and contexts across Europe.
Apiteca can foster a sense of community and shared responsibility, it can promote education and awareness about the importance of bees and lead to greater understanding and sensibilization about their role in the ecosystem and people’s health. That could increase the demand for more public support and efforts for their conservation and protection.
Overall, we strongly believe the project can provide a wide range of local solutions to global challenges, by supporting education, food security, biodiversity, sustainable development, and community engagement.
Apiteca is a project that has fostered the transformation of the library as a place of learning by connecting the community with the place and nature with an innovative approach.
It is a project that brings the community closer to honeybees, hence nature. The innovative learning process based on experimentation facilitates a change of perspective towards nature and sustainability while contributing to keep biodiversity.
2021 Design
March/April: Meetings of the municipal units involved in the project.
May/June: CoBoi (Public City Lab) meeting for project design. Start-up and workshops presentation
July/December: Activities schedule, analysis and review.
2022 Implementation
January-May: Permissions and logistics for the installation of the hives in the library.
March: participation workshop
April: Butterflies garden
May: Hives inside the library yard.
September-December: activities with the community: movieforum. Science’s Museum, Culturópolis and Honey Fest talks.
November: meeting with new Europe Challenge participants.
2023 Next Steps
Students High School developing projects
Beekeepers formation.
Asian Hornet Campaign.
Honey Plant campaign.
The benefits from the initiative are diverse and transversal: we are constructing a working network to improve our city to be more sustainable and beautiful, improving air quality, engaging with the community and library surroundings (butterfly garden, honey plants and naturalised pond). The results achieved so far are:
-increased awareness in the community about environment and health.
-having a beautiful lifelong and formal learning space for everyone.
-created new links between community, local entities, education sector and other municipal departments.
The envisaged results in the mid-long term are:
built a green corridor inside the city and in 2024 around the metropolitan area.
Increased the number of stakeholders sharing the project with other entities like nearby beekeepers.
We think Apiteca can be a supportive and informal learning environment for sustainability by facilitating skills acquisition that are essential for the development of a more sustainable future. It offers engaging, positive and real-life based experience, educator’s support and young people involvement. Certainly, about subjects such as beekeeping technologies, tools, and methods but also, communication skills, teamwork, civic responsibility and personal competences: such as self-management, problem-solving, and adaptability and sustainability. All this related to the ability to understand and apply the principles and practices of sustainable development as:
-Understanding the interlinkages between economic, social and environmental sustainability.
-Applying sustainable development principles
-Identifying and assessing the impacts of different actions and policies on sustainability.
-Communicating and collaborating effectively with stakeholders to promote sustainable development.
