The Innovation Manor Lab 1.0 is part of a larger educational project designed to respond to the urgency of developing new competencies among heritage professionals, primarily in Ukraine and Poland. It is an e-learning course followed by practical experience in the field. The course design will include the GreenComp framework, creating a new quality of teaching for a new generation of heritage professionals and upskilling the existing workforce within this sector and a larger audience.
Cross-border/international
Poland
Austria
Member State(s), Western Balkans and other countries: Other
{Empty}
It addresses urban-rural linkages
It refers to a physical transformation of the built environment (hard investment)
No
No
Yes
As a representative of an organization, in partnership with other organisations
Name of the organisation(s): Fundacja 8Marca (F8M) Type of organisation: Non-profit organisation First name of representative: Natalia Last name of representative: Gnoińska Gender: Female Nationality: Poland Function: Fundacja 8Marca Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Rokietnica 682 Town: Rokietnica Postal code: 37-562 Country: Poland Direct Tel:+48 604 924 491 E-mail:anna.gnoinska@8marca.org Website:https://8marca.org
Name of the organisation(s): Erste Foundation Type of organisation: Non-profit organisation First name of representative: Yana Last name of representative: Barinova Gender: Female Nationality: Ukraine Function: Project manager European Policies and Ukraine Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Am Belvedere 1 Town: Vienna Postal code: 1100 Country: Austria Direct Tel:+43 660 4410935 E-mail:yana.barinova@erstestiftung.org Website:https://erstestiftung.org
Name of the organisation(s): Narodowy Instytut Konserwacji Zabytków (NIKZ) Type of organisation: Public authority (European/national/regional/local) First name of representative: Michał Last name of representative: Laszczkowski Gender: Male Nationality: Poland Function: Managing Director Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Aleje Jerozoimskie 97 Town: Warszawa Postal code: 02-001 Country: Poland Direct Tel:+48 600 900 326 E-mail:m.laszczkowski@nikz.pl Website:https://nikz.pl
The Innovation Manor Lab 1.0 is part of the Innovation Manor Concept (NEB Finalist ‘22). This educational initiative aims to enhance interdisciplinarity, sustainability and cooperation within the heritage professionals community. The pilot is primarily dedicated to Ukrainian heritage professionals but will also be available to a larger audience.
Heritage buildings are seen as a barrier to achieving the EU goal of net zero carbon emissions. However, with sensitive retrofit and informed management, these buildings and their embodied carbon can be an integral part of the solution.
Although knowledge on sustainable heritage preservation is rapidly developing, policymakers, heritage stewards, and managers need better access to knowledge supported by scientific research, which has been stressed again in a recent report by the General Directorate for Education (2022).
Therefore, F8M initiated the idea of an Excellence Centre for heritage and conservation specialists to foster research, learn and gain the theoretical and practical skills necessary to thrive in the field in the future. The development of this idea will take 3-5 years. F8M is currently part of a multidisciplinary consortium that applied to the Horizon Europe programme with universities from Poland, the UK, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Ukraine. This consortium is the first strategic milestone of establishing a CEE Excellence Centre for Sustainable Heritage.
Facing the war in Ukraine, the development period of 3-5 years seems too long. After a Policy Lab organised by Erste Foundation considering heritage now and after the war, we understood the urgency to develop heritage preservation and management skills that will allow the sustainable protection, preservation and regeneration of Ukrainian heritage. Hence, we are preparing a specialised e-learning course dedicated to people in need of acquiring the skills necessary to understand, plan, manage, conduct, & advertise heritage-related activities.
Heritage
Sustainability
Lifelong learning
GreenComp
Innovation
The Innovation Manor Lab 1.0 course content aims to showcase the potential of interdisciplinarity and lifelong learning to achieve the objectives of carbon neutrality by 2050 within the heritage sector and the whole building stock from the beginning of the 20th century. Therefore it is sustainable in the social aspects.
Under the New European Bauhaus (NEB) principles of "beautiful, sustainable, together" the Innovation Manor Lab 1.0 will educate for a more sustainable and resource-efficient heritage. The education will start with the Ukrainian heritage professionals that need this education because of the ongoing war. The course will be taught online. Both the content and the e-learning approach make it sustainable from an environmental point of view.
The programme will be funded by institutions that will benefit from its results. It is also thought to have a commercial part for students and professionals or institutions that won’t be eligible for scholarships. This approach is economically justified because the idea is to gather different funding to provide first-class quality education for those who need it the most. Therefore, the programme is also sustainable.
This initiative is exemplary because it builds the education path based on NEB principles.
The Innovation Manor Lab 1.0 is an online course. The aesthetics, the candidate, and the student experience will be designed according to the best practices available on the market. The initiative foresees developing a coherent and aesthetic visual standard for the whole Innovation Manor Lab experience (also the offline one in the future).
The content, the duration of the classes, the right balance between lectures, own work and elements of interactive collaboration will ensure a high-quality experience.
This part of the project will be exemplary by the use of the best available solutions not only for the content but also for a seamless student experience.
The inclusion of the Innovation Manor Lab 1.0 has different aspects.
First, the course will have a scholarship for those needing education the most. A pricing scheme for non-scholarship students will be set up to facilitate access for external students from less developed countries or other less favoured groups.
In addition, students will get free access to the e-learning platform if they successfully pass the recruitment process. This process will be conducted to achieve gender balance among the students and with non-discrimination practices. The principles of diversity and inclusion will be applied to the content preparation manual of the course.
Secondly, the course will be taught online. It means that all participants can access the classes without generating travelling costs. The F8M will also work closely with other partners to lower the course costs by getting part of the content for free, e.g. as part of the CSR / ESG activities of the potential content providers.
Furthermore, graduating from this course will the heritage professionals will gain a new approach to the green transformation of heritage. In the long term, it will reduce renovation and operating costs and lead to enhanced accessibility to heritage sites.
The Innovation Manor Lab 1.0 is a grassroots initiative based on NEB ideas. It has been designed to preserve the tangible heritage for future generations. A recent study conducted by IPSOS for NIKZ shows that citizens are convinced that heritage contributes to the economic development of the regions. Therefore, they expect investments in heritage preservation to continue.
Therefore the result of the Innovation Manor Lab 1.0 and its further development will benefit civil society by educating a new generation of conservation officers and heritage stewards and upskilling the existing staff. Moreover, the benefit will be even more significant for Ukraine, as the course will teach how to efficiently protect heritage during the war and revitalise it after the conflict in a more sustainable, resource-efficient way concerning its historical value.
As the content of the course will be built on the best practices from different fields of science and available on a public online platform, it could also shortly be adapted for other EU countries.
Furthermore, the course will include components of Social Sciences and Humanities and foresight. This interdisciplinary approach means that the heritage managers and stewards will be better prepared to handle conflicts, manage change and involve the local community in the life of the heritage sites they care for. They will also be able to educate and explain the meaning of climate change and serve as a showcase for the neighbourhood or even a more extensive community if the site is prominent enough.
Finally, the long-term impact of the course will result in a significant reduction of the carbon footprint of the heritage building stock and facilitate its green transformation. This result will also have measurable effects on public health, i.e. the quality of life in civil society.
As soon as the Innovation Manor Concept, including the innovative educational path called the Innovation Manor Lab, was envisioned, it was clear to the F8M that an extensive network of stakeholders must be involved.
The development of this network started in June 2022 thanks to the cooperation with the Rzeszów Technical University (PRZ) and especially the Institute for architecture, civil engineering and environment (including also a team dedicated to heritage buildings conservation) and the Institute for Energy. This cooperation led rapidly to the creation of a consortium that applied for funding within the Horizon Europe Built4People initiative (Topic: HORIZON-CL5-2022-D4-02-03, application no. 101123537). The consortium is composed of 6 universities, 1 culture institution, 1 foresight consultancy and the F8M. One of the impacts of this cooperation is envisioned as a Central European Excellence Centre for innovative heritage conservation and education.
In the meantime, the F8M took part in a Policy Lab initiated by the Erste Foundation (AT), involving the highest authorities of the Ukrainian Ministry of Culture and many other Ukrainian and European heritage stakeholders. This Policy Lab triggered the initiative to develop the pilot e-learning version for the Ukrainian heritage officers. Furthermore, while assessing and designing the course, F8M consulted NIKZ (a new institution created in Poland dedicated to innovative heritage conservation). As a result, the management of NIKZ confirmed that the Innovation Manor Lab corresponds precisely to the vision this institution develops for the transformation of the heritage conservation sector.
Other stakeholders were also consulted during the design phase, e.g. the Centre for Sustainable Building Conservation at Cardiff University (UK) or the Fortress of Culture in Sibenik or the Heritage Conservation office of the Capital City of Warsaw, to verify the design methodology and the content of the course.
Understanding the need to break down the silos to reach carbon neutrality within the heritage sector, F8M cooperates with a large number of experts: historians, architects, civil and environmental engineers, electrical and computer engineers, sociologists, economists, management practitioners, foresight experts and heritage experts, not only confronting them with ongoing science discussions but cross-examining it between their respective fields of expertise. The role of the F8M in this discussion is to push boundaries and demonstrate the interaction between different disciplines to provide innovative solutions.
In addition to the exact sciences involvement, the students of the Innovation Manor Lab 1.0 will meet teachers from different areas: Design, Economics, Foresight, History, Sociology and Management (incl. Project and HR management).
The projects and exercises within the course will foster cooperation between students and the use of interdisciplinary knowledge.
No physical nor online space currently provides a holistic and forward-thinking approach to heritage-related education anywhere in Europe.
No policymaker, conservation specialist, university student, local authority member, site manager or constructor can find in an accessible and understandable way the information and knowledge necessary to make critical decisions related to heritage buildings and sites in a sustainable way.
Therefore, the Innovation Manor Lab 1.0 is the first European attempt to set a leading example for innovative and comprehensive education tools for all stakeholders directly or indirectly involved with the historic built environment.
What's more, it is a part of a growing grassroots movement initiated by a concept which was one of the NEB Prizes 2022 Finalists and gave life to an NGO dedicated to green and inclusive heritage.
The fact that it is an NGO that acts as a coordinator of a program involving the cooperation of many institutions is a real innovation in the heritage sector. F8M is determined to make it happen in the interest of Eastern European heritage with the hope of making a showcase for other regions and initiatives.
The Innovation Manor Concept (NEB Prizes finalist 2022) and the Innovation Manor Lab are designed in a way that can be easily duplicable within the whole European Union.
The interdisciplinarity of the approach, the cooperation of experts from different fields of science, the NGOs' and cultural institutions' involvement are exemplary. It reflects the very idea of the NEB movement.
The course will be mainly taught in English with subtitles possible in all necessary languages.
The only barrier to duplication is the legislation on the heritage that differs among the EU countries. This part of the course must be adapted case by case.
The basis for the Innovation Manor Concept is networking and interdisciplinarity, inspired by the theory of the quintuple helix of innovation.
Within the Innovation Manor Concept, the Innovation Manor Lab has the vision to dedicate itself towards education within the heritage professionals community.
The methodology used to design the education path in the long term is based primarily on the 70/20/10 Learning and Development theory, where 70% of knowledge is acquired while working, 20% while working with others, and 10% in formal courses, making this the long-term objective of this initiative.
The short-term objective (Innovation Manor Lab 1.0) is to design an e-learning course for Ukrainian heritage professionals unprepared to respond to the heritage being attacked and destroyed. To create the classes of this course, we used a qualitative method based on interviews and workshops with the key stakeholders. This methodology allowed us to determine the course's main directions, objectives and content.
After the project kick-off (in Q2 2023), the shape of the course and content will be refined by using different learning design approaches and with an in-depth consultation process with the stakeholders and the teaching staff. Using design thinking can aid in the perfect student journey within the course.
The methods used to design the Innovation Manor Lab are very pragmatic. They aim to deliver in a short period a pilot for Ukraine that will be further developed, regarding the ECTS system, to a complete master's degree in innovative heritage preservation (working name).
The short-term and long-term objectives require the F8M and other course organisers to cooperate closely with universities and cultural institutions renowned for their innovation and dedication to carbon neutrality goals.
This initiative addresses the challenge for European built heritage to reach carbon neutrality by 2050.
One of the five activities of the F8M, implementing the Innovation Manor Concept, is to set a new quality standard for a holistic, interdisciplinary, accessible heritage conservation education, including NEB ideas (Innovation Manor Lab). This new standard includes sustainability, circularity, traditional crafts, networking, digitalisation, management, strategic partnerships planning, marketing, prevention and community involvement.
In the short term, however, a key objective is to provide people managing and overlooking heritage in times of crisis (like the ongoing war in Ukraine) with the necessary tools to take the right decisions and plan the future of the historical objects under their care to prevent further damage.
In the long term, the objective is to build an Excellence Centre for sustainable heritage preservation in Central and Eastern Europe, based on a Horizon Europe research project (Topic: HORIZON-CL5-2022-D4-02-03, application no. 101123537). Furthermore, if the project is not funded, to pursue the cooperation of the consortium with other funding opportunities with the same common objective - to modernise the heritage-related professions in the region, preserving the historical value of the buildings and reducing their carbon footprint.
The initiative corresponds to the following SDGs:
4 - Quality Education
9 - Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure
11 - Sustainable cities and communities
13 - Climate action
The Innovation Manor Concept by F8M is composed of 5 fields of activities:
- restoring historic buildings and giving them new socially oriented functions;
- sharing knowledge with owners of historic buildings and ultimately creating a multi-functional Innovation Manor digital platform;
- awarding the Innovation Manor quality label;
- initiating and participating in academic and research projects;
developing a modern historic education programme in heritage building conservation for professionals in conservation, construction, utilities and artisans (Innovation Manor Lab).
Initially, the education programme was prepared to be deployed while restoring selected historic sites.
The war in Ukraine created a need for faster and more accessible action. The team started working in mid-December 2022. We are proud of its progress and decided to present it to the NEB Education Prizes. We still need to sign documents.
The initiative is now at a pre-start stage:
- The work plan and budget prepared by F8M have been sent to the partners and validated.
- The Erste Foundation promised to grant 50% of the necessary funding (the total is 500 000 euros). Final confirmation by the end of February, allowing the initiative to kick off in Q2 2023.
- The Erste Foundation team is ready to cooperate with F8M to research additional funding opportunities.
- NIKZ (partner of the initiative) declared its intention to support and deploy the course in Poland (ongoing funding discussions).
- F8M, part of a Horizon Europe consortium related to resource-efficient heritage preservation, and the Erste Foundation team have access to most of the resources needed for the course content.
Once the e-learning version of the course is up and running, it will be coupled with practical learning on real sites and the possibility of internships for the students. As the course will be available on an e-learning platform, the dissemination of the content of the course will start from Day 1.
The Innovation Manor Lab 1.0 is designed to enhance the circularity and sustainability mindset within Ukraine, Poland's very closed and conservative heritage officers community and more. It also aims to build a new generation of heritage professionals. According to the findings of the report “Strengthening cultural heritage resilience for climate change” (Directorate-General for Education, 2022) and the similar analysis performed by Historic Heritage Scotland, the skills of heritage professionals are one of the barriers to green transformation.
The Innovation Manor Lab 1.0 will first develop interdisciplinary skills for heritage professionals offering an innovative course accessible via an internationally recognised e-learning platform. Secondly, it will follow the GreenComp framework in designing the detailed content of the different lectures.
At F8M, we cooperate with a vast network of experts and challenge the scientific community to think differently. We also collaborate with a leading foresight consultancy (4CF) in designing the course. In addition, one of the leaders of the Foundation is a C-level HR officer. Thanks to this knowledge, future skills and competences are part of the Innovation Manor Concept and Innovation Manor Lab.
