ReLabs. Laboratorio de Residuos Vivos (Laboratory of Living Waste)
ReLabs is based on the 3 pillars: garbage, culture and citizenship. It started as a research project to review the waste management system of Madrid Municipality. The aim was to identify materials that have not end their useful life and reused them trough public open call to co-design and collectively construct playgrounds in municipal schools. The construction process is a pedagogic tool for environmental awareness and for education in participatory urban planning and place making.
Regional
Spain
Madrid
Mainly urban
It refers to other types of transformations (soft investment)
No
No
Yes
2020-12-31
As a representative of an organisation
Name of the organisation(s): Basurama Type of organisation: Non-profit organisation First name of representative: Mónica Last name of representative: Gutiérrez Herrero Gender: Female Nationality: Spain Function: memeber of Basurama (horizontal collective) Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Avenida Daroca nº49, callejón, nave Town: Madrid Postal code: 28007 Country: Spain Direct Tel:+34 911 15 23 82 E-mail:info@basurama.org Website:http://www.basurama.org
Most of the world's population lives in cities, which added to our consumption model an immense amount of municipal waste is produced on a daily basis. Are we adapting to a more circular economy based development? How should be cities design in a more efficient and responsible way? Could we do it while making the process educational and while trying to generate permanent changent at a political al legal basis? Are we able to design cities in a more participatory, democratic and citizen oriented prespective?
ReLabs started as a research project with the aims to review the current waste management system to make it more efficient and more adapted to new contemporary problems. The project begins in 2017 - financially supported by the Daniel and Nina Carasso Foundation- with the collaboration of Madrid City Council. The research on materials lasted practically one year and the next two we were working on making posible the reuse of the identified waste trough public open calls for the transformation of schoolyards; but also making posible collaboration agreements between municipality and asociations with social objectives.
Material reuse not only makes the waste management system more efficient, supports circularity economy but also minimizes the consumption of raw materials and therefore bets on emission reduction and move towards a more fair, democratic and sustainable urban model. In addition, the project have been developing pleas at diferent levels to set precedents and make permanent changes for a city design focusing on citizens, environment and development rather than only in economy.
The project is an innovative example, and have the potencial of being exportable and scalable to other cities. It is a prototipe of how both formal and informal knowledge could work together for city design and to empower citizenship and cooperation.
circular economy
participation
urban design
waste management
citizenship
- Encourage a culture of re-use inside public institutions and the society
- Elaborate a catalogue of the waste and storage materials available at the Madrid municipality and its related companies
- Use these materials to implement 3 interventions in Madrid public school yards trought a public open call in relation with already existing programs at Madrid Municipality.
-Research and test new school playground elements and how they could meet safety law.
- Make suggestions to change the law, when necesary, to make reuse posible at city level and making materials available for social impact projects.
- Generate new imaginaries of what play could be, of how playgrounds and public space could be imagine and build in another way, creating playfull and special urban furniture.
> Project team: in a first phase basurama, artist that win the open call and selected schools and in a second phase basurama, teachers and experts. Teachers were happy to be listen, to be taken into account to understand and clarify responsabilities with the public administration, to help municipality to do better in the future and to learn basic tools to work by themselves in changing things. Project have been a blast of energy for them. They also become more organize and create an association to work further and share problems and posible solutions.
> Municipaly workers: they have been colaborators in the fist phase to make the material research but they have also been beneficiaries of the research as a lot of the information we gather was not clear for them due to the incommunication between the diferent departments at municipality. So the project help to put in relation depatments that did not work together but which work will benefit of the collaboratuon. Moreover the municipality started a learning group in which people of diferent departmets are present as a way to improve efficiency. They also start cataloging materials and making an internal and external communication to favor reuse, the start promoting agreements with associations and coopetatives from the social and solidarity economy.
> Citizenship/ Civil Society: the comunication of the project, the environmental public campain, the public legal pleas, the free public guide for designing better public schools, the research about certification of urban furniture and playgroundswith reuse materials …..every step of the project have been share and publiched which help other collectives, citizens and professional of other disciplines to get transparent information. We did still have a lot of people contacting us to ask about how to obtain materials, how could they get funds for transforming their school ...etc
One of the objectives of the project was to use the waste materials for redesinging school courtyards, as they are one of the first public spaces where kids interact but at the moment they are not guaranteen neither inclusion nor gender equality. They are designed as a football pitch which excludes a lor of kids, making courtyards and public spaces more diverse, more dinamics and more versatile and flexible is crucial for inclusion, and that is one of our aims.
The codesign process was made together with te school community but final results where designed by architects and artitics teams. Funtionality and propouse are very important but also sustainability, aesthetics, quality and safety.
The project has an horizontal government system, based on communication and dialogue and on a continuos evaluation of the development of the objectives pursued. There is a first phase of theproject exclusively decicated to create a group where everyone feels free to speak and share their opinions and thoughts. We discover that art is a very useful tool to generate inclusive selfmanagement governing systems as there is no jerarchy .
ReLabs allows citizens to be part of the design process of the enviroments where they live, we focus on the principle that everyone has de ability to be part of the constrution and design of their own cities, participation is key for a more democratic urban design and better cities for all.
All the project results came from participatory process with the objective of extracting lessons that allow, on the one hand, to review failures in the system (waste management and design of public spaces), and on the other hand, to make proposals for change in the short and medium term that enable municipaly to adapt and propouse transitional examples for more social and environmental policies.
To go a little more in the detail, the phases where civil society have been the main actor:
_First phase, municipal workers as part of civil society have been key to better understanding how the waste management system really works, how the municipality itself is organize, who is in charge of what ...at the end it has help to clarufy and make more transparent which departments, which legislations and what chanels are the important ones.
_Second phase; working with school communities (mother and fathers, kids, teachers, management team ….) in co-designing the courtyardds of public schools.
_Third phase, a working group of teachers, municipality works and experts in diferent fields worked together to make a guide of how to design public schools. The guide was divided 1) texts that will make up the theoretical framework 2)Legal framework -Regulatory legislation and Definition of competences- 3) Technical Recommendations with the work carried out in the sessions with the teachers, its objective is to serve as a base for the municipal technicians and architects when designing and building the new nursery schools. These recommendations will collect from basic requirements of the plot, orientation, distribution of spaces, materials, ....etc
ollaboration has been one of our transversal objectives, as we already mention we belive that problems we are facing in contemporary societies could not be solve for a single point of view so thinking out of the box and thinking with people from diferent fields help everyone to change their prespective and widen the range of posible solutions.
Local
We work on a local basis with teachers, children, youngsters, people working at municipality; but also with , whith experts of diferent fiels sucha as law, children rights, playground designers, ingeniers, politicians, ….etc
Regional -National
Working with diferent experts
Children's Rights, Play and psychomotricity from the pedagogical point of view, Climate emergency, Space as a "third teacher", Inclusion: equity, diversity, integration, Psychoenvironmental vision
European
We have work with diferent experts both in the waste management systems and waste reuse (ROTOR, …) and also get in relation with the network of profesional working on the fild pdf play, children and childrens rights (Play4all, UNICEF, Real Play City Chanllenge, Child in the city ...etc)
Disciplines that encounter in the project are architecture, urbanisim, education, public bodies, politicians, lawers, ingeniers, university teachers, culture and education fundations, enterprices, ...etc
We have methodology favour meetings, round tables, face to face meeting, online conversations between the diferent actors so they could discuss, questions and share their experiences and knowledge. Sometimes we were the ones designing and moderating the encounters, as part of the participatory process, but some other times the participants ask to meet with one of the other actors specifically to have a more focus conversation on one topic.
As a sump up ReLabs has impact in the 3 pilar of sustainable development.
** Economic: it makes the waste system more efficient, encourage repair (which generates employ) and reuse (which diminishes the amount of expenses for municipality) and promote a circular economy model.
** Environmental: innovating in the management system, searching for new ways to reuse materials and linking it with and education program that make awareness but also focus on activating citizenship, making them part of the solution and encouraging social participation.
**Social: empowering comunities so they become more resilient responding in a more supportive and organized manner.
**Education: art and reuse as a pedagogical tool on public school to co-design and built their own coutyards.
But on a more specific aproach ReLabs had produce impacts at administrative, legal al social level on this specific points:
> The first material map for promoting a more circular economy in Madrid city council was done. It help visualice the material to general public but also to municipality itself.
> Already existing good practices have been discover and visualize and communicate to general public.
> 3 prototipes have been constructed in public schools.
> An open draft for having a Material Assignment Agreement have been publish and help other assotiations to sign a collaboration proposal with the Municipality.
> Cataloging and monthly newsletter has begun to be done by the city council to facilitate the reuse of materials at an internal level and with external collaborators
> Legal public pleas regarding Urban furniture, Waste Management and Bidding contracts have been summited to the Council and some of the pleas have been taken into account in the development of news laws
> We have been ask for advise regarding the new Child Law and we do make some suggestion to it that have been defended by diverse political parties, mainly regarding the right to play and the right to participation.
ReLabs combine bottom-up proposals with up-down policies to improve waste management, citizens participation and public space. This project work at both levels, understanding that we need to work on small and incremental innovations to lead to changes in the system.
ReLabs proposes changes on:
1) Law (making proposals to adapt design and avoid homogenety in public space and playgrounds)
2) Waste Management (increse reuse and repair to promote a more circular economy)
3) Promote Participation to design and build public spaces.
4) Set real examples of reuse at urban scale
5) Promote an active environmental education
The main innovative point of Relabs are:
Focused in REDUCING and REUSING (instead of Recycling).
Work from a creative, playful perspective, with a proactive and hands-on approach.
Building REAL and LIVING prototypes TOGETHER with their own COMMUNITIES
Desiging project that make working together citizens, municipality, artist, schools ...stakeholders from diferent backgrounds to solve problems together.
Empowering bottom-up citizens proposals trough participatory process and co-construction.
Lobbing from a up-down position to change laws and procidements trough pleas.
Defend the right to Play, to Participate and of a safe Public Space for kids which means a better city for all inhabitants.
The project proposes a participatory methodology both in the research part (together with municipality techniciand and public bodie workers), the prototiping part (with art collectives and publics school) and in the pleas (legal advice and both teachers and technicians suggestions).
Main methodological points are:
- Research the real waste management system of the different areas of the municipality, and map their stored available materials.
- Create useful knowledge for the officials at Madrid Municipality,bringing them together and train them in creative reusing
- Organize national and international meetings to share the knowledge and learn from other successful projects.
- Produce a detailed analysis of the existing management protocols and agents, with extensive field work, interviewing individuals, and exploring the vast array of different stores, spaces and offices.
Testing the materials to be reused
Work on a legal basis to make pleas to the municipal laws that enable reuse over recicling.
ReLabs, as mention previously, is a project methodology in itself , it is designed as a path to follow to make an evaluation of waste management of a city, so it could be apply to any other european city.
This project is exportable and scalable to other cities, we have just made a pilot version, we have design a methodology that can be aplied and adapt to diferent cities and contexts. We belive ReLabs is an innovative example in the union of both formal and informal knowledge for the design of cities and for the creation of citizenship. We also consider that working at several levels, creating links and establishing networks between the administrative, the public, the private, the social movements and relating it to education in action is essential to seek and prototype solutions to contemporary problems that arise at global level; but at the same time make these projects a flexible model of inspiration for be implemented in other cities and municipalities.
It can be applied in other contexts, we believe that doing from, with and for civil society and their institutions is essential to transform, adapt and generate links between them.
Fundamental Keys: listening, building trust, horizontal work, communication
Transversal Keys: Mediation, Collaboration, Training and Connection with experts on specific topics jointly identified.
The project is adressing 4 sustainable goals:
> SGD 4 Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all: for a more inclusive and equitable education we must give children the right of participation but we also need to guarantee the right to play, as playing is one of the main forms in which kids learn, one of the exclusive spaces where they are free as they could interact with their pears whithout the mediation of an adult. Schools and public spaces are the main places where kids interact whit each other and thus is essential that are design with a gender equality and inclusion prespective.
>SDG11 Sustainable Cities and Communities: Relabs try to give responses tocomplex societal problems through co-creation. Citzens are the true experts of how to life on a day basis on the city,, what they need, so involving them in the process of design the public spaces in essential to make better cities for everyone.
For having more sustainable and resilient cities we have to build communities and this would not be posible if we do not think and design public spaces with that propouse. At the moment public space is mainly highjacket I favor to consumtion, there are less and less climate refugies (small green parck around the city) and administration keep on cementing as the cost for maintenance is fewer that having a garden, a playground or a meeting place.
>SDG12 Responsible Consumption and Production: reduce, repair, and reuse came before of recycling but it seems as if we have forgoten it. Most of our cities and ourselves we are just focus on recicle which does not mean a change on the consuption behaviour. We focus on reusing because we belive is a way to change people minds, change the way they do see trash and open their mind for a more creative way of relate to waste.
>SDG13 Climate Action: reparing and reusing materials and spaces has a direct impact on environmental education and the reduce of consume which obvio
