Kaleidoscoop : eco-rehabilitation in a circular, innovative and humanist economy
Kaleidoscoop is a cross-border third-place cooperation project open to all for working, doing business and consuming differently. It brings together some 50 partners, including stakeholders in employment, the Social and Solidarity Economy, economic development and social innovation, who work together to come up with new services and activities for the territory and its inhabitants. Kaleidoscoop’s core activity is working for ecological, economic and social transition.
Cross-border/international
France
Germany
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Ville et Eurométropole de Strasbourg (France)
Kehl (Germany)
Région Grand Est
Collectivité Européenne d'Alsace
Ortenau
Mainly urban
It refers to a physical transformation of the built environment (hard investment)
Yes
ERDF : European Regional Development Fund
Interreg V Rhin supérieur January 2020 - June 2023
No
Yes
2022-12-07
As a representative of an organisation
Name of the organisation(s): Kaleidoscoop Type of organisation: Non-profit organisation First name of representative: Jean-François Last name of representative: Jacquemin Gender: Male Nationality: France Function: President Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: 5 rue de la Coopérative Town: Strasbourg Postal code: 67000 Country: France Direct Tel:+33 6 24 22 55 60 E-mail:manon.marquis@kaleidos.coop Website:http://www.kaleidos.coop
Kaleidoscoop is a cross-border third-place cooperation project open to all for working, doing business and consuming differently. It has been a TCPE, or Territorial Centre for Economic Cooperation, since 2015, and brings together some 50 partners, including stakeholders in employment, the Social and Solidarity Economy, economic development and social innovation, who work together to come up with new services and activities for the territory and its inhabitants. Kaleidoscoop’s core activity is working for ecological, economic and social transition. The centre is frequented by both locals and people from outside the district and by people working in employment, in the Social and Solidarity Economy and in entrepreneurial initiatives. They can come and work here every day, or whenever they want, they can follow training courses and workshops or learn at conferences, have a chat over a coffee or during an event and also do responsible shopping. It’s also about sharing and working out a more purposeful, fairer relationship with the world around them and with work, helping their fellow humans and the world itself.
The Kaleidoscoop third place is in Strasbourg, located just a couple of tram stops away from Germany, on a brownfield site, formerly the head office of COOP Alsace, once the mainstay of the Social and Solidarity Economy in Alsace. Kaleidoscoop occupies 2800 m² in a new neighbourhood of 90,000 m² currently undergoing rehabilitation, with a past firmly rooted in the values of cooperation and virtuous consumption. The location halfway between the centres of Strasbourg in France and Kehl in Germany offers an ideal background for a cross-border dynamic providing continuity across the whole of our project. This makes us the first structure in Strasbourg to embody cross-border cooperation. With the support of the European Interreg V Upper Rhine programme, the building phase is now completed and we have been in our third place since late 2022.
cross-border
eco-responsibility
cooperation
collective
conviviality
The finishing work, for which Kaleidoscoop is project manager, has been carried out on a virtuous and eco-responsible basis. Visits to a dozen or so German, Swiss and French third places have helped confirm the value of the Kaleidoscoop approach and set out meaningful commitments:
- Rehabilitation and development work to be performed in accordance with Effinergie guidelines for energy efficiency
- Bioclimatic design of spaces
- Ecological ventilation system instead of air-conditioning
- Cooperation with Boma, a Strasbourg-based non-profit specialist, to use materials from other worksites (ceramics, toilets, etc.)
- Heating system connected to the urban heating network (biomass, energy by-products from neighbouring businesses)
- Recovery of rainwater to use for watering plants
- Use of native trees for green spaces
- Reuse of furniture in line with the circular economy
- Creation of a Users’ Committee for eco-environmental actions (monthly meetings since October 2021) for collective decision-making
In addition, all the calls for tender issued for the finishing work in Kaleidoscoop contained social clauses amounting to about 10% of the total. 10% of the total number of work hours set out in the contracts were thus carried out by people excluded from the workplace. The paintwork contract was reserved exclusively for a work-based inclusion structure.
The third place is now operational. We are paying particular attention to:
• Waste and bio waste management
• Daily energy consumption
• The continuation of discussions between users of the third place as to its environmental initiatives
The decision to rehabilitate a brownfield site allowed Kaleidoscoop to opt for renovating an existing building and so to do away with the need for a new build and avoid extending the urban sprawl in the densely populated area of Strasbourg/Kehl, in line with the Green Deal, which identifies construction as a main focal point, and also in accordance with the action plan for the circular economy.
Kaleidoscoop drew up clear specifications for the finishing work for its premises of 2800 m², covering aesthetics, sustainable development and respect for the architectural heritage. As project leader for the refurbishment work, Kaleidoscoop chose UN1ON, a young Strasbourg-based architects practice which shares the same values as the project: co-design, sobriety and reuse. We make sure that the values which we hold dear have been upheld across every phase of the project and are committed to setting the standard for the environmental approach used in renovating our building.
Architectural choices were determined by the desire to bring out the brownfield aspect of the site and to retain the key heritage features:
- Ceilings and pillars were left untouched, with no architectural interference, to highlight the past role of the site (ceramic tiles in the building which once housed the bakery, for example)
- Technical features, such as conduits, cableways and radiant panels, are left exposed in the ceiling to emphasise the building’s industrial background
- Locally or bio-sourced materials have been given priority: raw wood, recycled wood fibre for the floor, recycled-plastic terrazzo, eco-friendly paint producing an aesthetically harmonious and sober environmental consistency.
The glass canopy is the beating heart of our building. It’s a crossing point and a living space, and is fitted with a passageway (a nod to Alsatian farmhouses) leading to the other parts of the building. The brick chimney, which dates back to 1911, has been kept as a focal point of the premises.
Right from the start of the project co-construction process, we involved the operational structures of the neighbouring Port du Rhin district, a priority neighbourhood identified in the city’s strategic policies. Sparsely inhabited, with a population of some 1500 people, the district faces a number of issues, with a poverty rate of 50%, the second highest rate of unemployment in the Eurometropolis of Strasbourg, a high school drop-out rate and a lack of neighbourhood shops and services. The local community centre and associations combating social exclusion have been included within our Société Coopérative d’Intérêt Collectif (cooperative community-oriented enterprise), which allows us to keep a close watch on whether our third place is meeting the needs of local residents. We organise regular events within the neighbourhood and our marketplace, the SSE Boutique, which is run by integration and solidarity organisations, offers a space for people to do their shopping at low cost. The Maison de l’emploi Strasbourg job centre, a co-founder and partner of the third place, runs a friendly, welcoming area of around 100 m² just by the entrance of the Kaleidoscoop, offering advice and information on, for example, cross-border opportunities. It is used by jobseekers and by people living on either side of the border to get information on job prospects, training, project developments, starting up new businesses and where to go for answers to other enquiries.
Our organisation also houses partners and other tenants specialising in creating pathways towards employment and in starting up new businesses and they are an important source of in-house expertise, helping integrate people who have fallen out of the job market.
THSN by Singa is a cross-border incubator, with 80 m² of office space on the first floor of our building. Its aim is to provide daily support to help both refugees and local inhabitants get their cross-border projects off the ground.
Kaleidoscoop has set itself several tasks: promoting the Social and Solidarity Economy and social innovation; providing support for people starting impactful new businesses; facilitating cooperation between employment stakeholders and entrepreneurs; promoting cross-border employment; fostering citizen participation and involvement; encouraging eco-responsible practices. We have introduced a range of services to help achieve these aims, covering both the ecosystem of SSE structures active within the territory and the general public. Kaleidoscoop itself possesses a wide-ranging ecosystem that allows it to create new synergies and innovations around the key components of our third place – ecological transition and cross-border cooperation. Located as it is near the centres of Strasbourg and Kehl (the largest German border town) and also the priority district of the Port du Rhin, our services are able to reach out to a highly diverse public, in cooperation with the other stakeholders within the Strasbourg-Ortenau cross-border territory. Over 150 people will be working on a daily basis in the third place, while several thousand visitors are expected as from the first year of operation. Since the planning and construction phase of the Kaleidoscoop project back in 2015, the team and copilots of the third place have always set out to involve future beneficiaries so as to formulate a consistent and appropriate range of services in line with their needs, including a period of consultation, mobilising sociology researchers and students to perform field surveys, fact-finding visits to other third places, identifying and providing support for the Boutique project collective and organising pre-figurative events. During its day-to-day activities, the third place intends to continue this learning-based approach and carry out regular impact assessments.
Kaleidoscoop has the status of an SCIC cooperative community-oriented enterprise, which allows it to involve a wide variety of stakeholders in its governance. Our enterprise comprises six colleges – the founder copilots (Maison de l’emploi de Strasbourg, CRESS Grand Est and Cooproduction), tenants, employees, public bodies (Kehl in Germany, the City of Strasbourg and the Eurometropolis of Strasbourg), businesses and members of civil society. The SCIC has 30 German and French stakeholder members, , who take decisions within the framework of a Cooperative Council. We play an active role in many local dynamics (network of third places of the Grand Est region) and are in close contact with a variety of third places in the Upper Rhine area, notably in Freiburg (Haus des Engagements and Grünhof), involving sharing good practices and organising crossover initiatives for a range of audiences. At the national level, we are recognised as a PTCE Compagnon, supporting emerging collectives and budding PTCEs (Territorial Centres for Economic Cooperation). We are often called upon to take part in webinars for the French Third Place national network and for the RTES network of territorial agencies for a solidarity economy. At the European level, we receive considerable support from the INTERREG V Upper Rhine programme (half of our finishing work was co-financed by the programme). We have been able to work on several occasions with the European Commission DG-GROW, notably with an expert group on the social economy on the subject of clusters of social and ecological innovation within the European Union (Kaleidoscoop is featured on page 54 of the report published by the GECES sub-group). We were visited by the European Parliamentary Association in autumn 2022, a benefit of Strasbourg’s European profile. When our project was in its structuring phrase, we were active participants in the URBACT–Boostinno project, which took us to a number of inspiring places in Europe.
Kaleidoscoop’s core activities are based on the following thematics: cross-border, jobs and eco-responsibility, all of which are part of the everyday work of the CRESS, the Regional Chamber for the Social and Solidarity Economy for the Grand Est region, which helps drive the SSE at territorial level, and Cooproduction, a cooperative company fostering cooperative entrepreneurship and which brings together the Cooperatives for Activities and Employment and the Maison de l’Emploi de Strasbourg job centre, coordinating and driving projects for balancing employer needs against available manpower with regard to the Strasbourg-Ortenau cross-border region. The day-to-day eco-responsible aspect of the third place is driven by the staff of the Kaleidoscoop SCIC, some of whom are trained in working in ecological transition. As mentioned above, Kaleidoscoop is an SCIC cooperative community-oriented enterprise, a legal status which allows it to adhere to the fundamental cooperative values of the SSE and to set up a horizontal, shared governance. Kaleidoscoop works with some 50 partners, each of whom brings their professional expertise and their own networks of partners to bolster the third-place ecosystem. This system of shared governance allows the regular involvement of the partners in the process of co-constructing the third place on an everyday basis. Having stakeholders from such varied backgrounds working together produces a highly rewarding set of different viewpoints and work practices and offers a clearer picture of the challenges of the territory, as each stakeholder considers the project from a different perspective. This is one of the main benefits of the cooperation.
Now that our sustainable construction works are finished and we are installed in our third place, the ecosystem of Kaleidoscoop allows the regular users of the third place to meet, exchange and create new collaborations. For example, new Franco-German projects are being developed between resident organisations ("Office Franco-Allemand pour la Jeunesse" and "les Alternateurs" on the coaching of French and German adolescents on their professional posture through theatrical practice), the opening week scheduled for 9 to 14 May 2023 is being developed collectively and will offer a fun, artistic and eclectic programme, open to everyone: inhabitants of the COOP and Port du Rhin neighbourhoods, users of the third place, partners, etc. This will demonstrate Kaleidoscoop's capacity to mobilise and be agile in addressing a very wide audience in its service offer. The kick-off date of this week is not insignificant as the 9th of May is the date of the Europe Day. We will thus highlight the cross-border dimension of our third place through a bilingual, intercultural and festive programme. Facilitating cooperation, raising awareness of ecological, economic and social transitions, creating bridges on a cross-border scale are all founding pillars for Kaleidoscoop in its daily missions and aimed at the many users who gravitate around the third place. The objective is to establish Kaleidoscoop as a key cross-border player on the Strasbourg-Ortenau scale.
One of the great strengths of Kaleidoscoop is the actual concept of a third place, whereby the vocation is to pool spaces and skills, hybridise activities and form a committed citizens collective, fostering a cooperative approach to answering the challenges of their territory. Kaleidoscoop offers two large office spaces for SSE structures, with a capacity of 80 people, 1 co-working area, 1 events room available for hire for seminars, training, teambuilding and for organising events on cross-border, employment, eco-responsibility and cultural thematics, 1 store (boutique) for responsible pooled purchasing involving a dozen or so SSE stakeholders, the first of its kind in France with regard to its size (400 m² of retail space) and the number of associated partners (Emmaüs, local and organic food produce, second-hand and ethical clothing, etc.), 1 café serving food and local and sustainable drinks, 1 THSN By SINGA incubator providing support for refugee entrepreneurial initiatives and 1 cross-border resource centre for cross-border cooperation.
One of the standout features of Kaleidoscoop is the interaction between the different spaces and the partners running them, which provides both a broader scope of action and a larger number of beneficiaries. Kaleidoscoop’s innovation-led cross-border positioning and environmental focus has been an integral part of the third place’s DNA ever since its earliest days. The centre’s location offers a considerable advantage for promoting intercultural identity both between France and Germany and across Europe. The City of Strasbourg, European capital, and the Eurometropolis, are regular contributors to the work of the European Commission (GECES, social economy action plans, transition pathway, ESER network) and spotlight the synergies that the work carried out in partnership with Kaleidoscoop and its members has achieved within the territory.
1)The idea came about in 2015: the 3 copilots advanced the projects together and expressed their willingness to form a single entity to benefit from synergies
2)The dynamic attracted other partners, including SSE organisations, businesses and local authorities. The PTCE (Territorial Centre for Economic Cooperation) was formed in 2016 for creating a new cross-border place on the thematics of employment, entrepreneurship and the SSE
3)At the same time, the opportunity arose to move into the COOP brownfield site.
4)The development was also of interest to the bodies involved in co-construction for the territory and its ecosystem: the SSE Council, responsible for constructing SSE policy in the Eurometropolis, the local support group for the Urbact Boost’Inno programme and its European network
5)The BEFA (lease arrangement before completion of the building) was signed in 2018 with the owner. At the same time, we continued to work on the range of services and expanded the project’s partner network (with the support of the European Social Fund)
6)Kaleidoscoop became an SCIC in 2019, initially with 20 members, and the first employee was hired in early 2020
7)Interreg funding began in 2020 and allowed us, as project leaders, to co-finance the finishing work. The architect was selected through a call for tenders in 2020
8)The building envelope and structural works were completed in late 2021, at which time we launched calls for tenders for eco-responsible finishing work
9)Two more staff joined the SCIC in 2022 – a communication and partnerships manager and an ecological transition project leader.
10)Once work on the building was completed in the 2022, our third place moved in. We are now in the third-place activation phase.
A detailed methodology, drafted in French and in German, describing a highly virtuous eco-responsible process for managing the finishing work and the reuse of materials for refurbishing our premises, is due to be completed in the first half of 2023 and presented to the Ineterreg V Upper Rhine programme. This should prove highly useful for knowledge capitalisation and transfer and subsequently to allow the expertise we have gained across the various stages of the construction to be used in other projects. Part of this methodology will focus on the co-construction processes implemented with our various partners.
In addition, we are developing a network of cross-border third places working on ecological transition, which has already resulted in the publication of a Franco-German guide on good practices in third places. The guide may be of help to other third-place projects, which will be able to use practices tested in the Upper Rhine and draw inspiration from them for moving forward with their own projects. The basis for writing the guide came about through meetings with partners and interviews conducted with 20 or so third places in both Germany and Switzerland by an eco-consultant undergoing training in environment-related activities. The pace of this cross-border partnership work is set to step up over the next few years and give rise to further contacts and collective projects. Kaleidoscoop considers itself also to be a testing ground for the circular economy, expecting to produce technical innovations in areas such as recovering grey water and achieving energy savings, which can be reproduced by other partner third places.
The wide range of actions undertaken by Kaleidoscoop and the diversity of the people they reach out to point the way towards several types of transition: economic (fostering individual and collective entrepreneurship for all, developing the SSE, cooperation, social innovation and responsible purchasing), ecological (reducing the ecological footprint of professional activities and raising public awareness of ecological transition), social (working for social inclusion and social diversity through the everyday actions of this living and working space). In addition to specific day-to-day actions, such as waste sorting management and the installation of a composter, raising public awareness is a significant lever and a focal point for Kaleidoscoop working in conjunction with the collective within the third place and in support of the work carried out by the public authorities across the territory. This is one of the great strengths of such a hybrid place – the construction of a community with multiple complementary skills working for a society in transition and a showcase for an alternative approach.
This means that anyone, both permanent or temporary employees, locals or non-locals, partners, businesses or just those driven by curiosity, will be able to find at the Kaleidoscoop a whole range of possibilities, including healthy and sustainable local grocery products in the Boutique, neighbourhood services such as bike self-repair and a solidarity concierge for easing everyday life. The services also encourage the use of soft mobilities and the reuse and sharing of materials. DIY workshops are organised to teach people how to make day-to-day products, while intercultural workshops foster cooperation between France and Germany. These initiatives can be supported by an ecosystem of entrepreneurs and SSE organisations, which also acts to raise awareness ecological, social and digital thematics, for example, through seminars, workshops or conferences.
