Co-Creation Lab

Safe and inclusive space for co-creation of knowledge and practices

The Co-Creation Lab is dedicated to tackling complex sustainability challenges that transcend disciplines, sectors, and societal boundaries. These challenges are often characterized by their wicked nature, i.e., conflicting objectives, interconnections and unpredictable outcomes. To navigate this complexity, the Lab employs a unique Co-Creation Approach, fostering collaboration between researchers, policymakers, businesses, NGOs, and citizens. By integrating diverse knowledge, perspectives, and values, the Lab drives innovative, inclusive, and transformative processes that address sustainability issues both locally and globally.

Our approach emphasises collaborative learning through exploration and experimentation in a safe, inclusive and creative space. It incorporates tools such as transformative game design, storytelling, imaginaries and participatory media to jointly define problems and explore alternatives and innovations. The approach thereby moves beyond conventional science and policy, offering a learning environment that embraces diversity, attends to power imbalances, fostering long-term collaboration for sustainable transformations.

Purpose of the Co-Creation Lab

The Co-Creation Lab serves as a collaborative platform designed to:

• Address Conflicting Objectives: By engaging collaboration between researchers from diverse disciplines and societal actors across sectors, the Lab fosters the co-design of innovations, actions and processes in real-world contexts, minimizing the risk of unforeseen consequences.
• Bridge Theory and Practice: Integrating knowledge production, translation, and implementation into continuous processes helps stakeholders navigate complex sustainability challenges through learning by doing.
• Support Policy Development: The Lab offers long-term support to governmental authorities and organizations, helping design and evaluate policy actions that extend beyond traditional academic outputs like workshops and seminars.

The Co-Creation Lab Model

1. Support Process Design in Transdisciplinary Sustainability Research: The Lab employs co-creation approaches to design innovative processes that integrate diverse stakeholder insights into sustainability research applications and projects.
2. Competence Development in Co-Creation: Strengthening co-creation competencies for professionals, researchers, and practitioners ensures the capacity to handle complex, interconnected challenges effectively.
3. Research and Development of Frameworks for Planning, Implementation, and Impact Evaluation: The Lab is committed to developing comprehensive frameworks for the entire co-creation process—from planning and implementation to monitoring and evaluating the impact of co-creation in sustainability transformations.

Long Term Value of the Co-Creation Lab

The Lab contributes to high-quality research in three ways: i) it enables long time horizons for research endeavors; ii) it allows for open-ended and co-creative innovation processes; iii) it supports reflexive co-learning and strong cross-sector and cross-discipline collaboration and impact. Through this systemic approach, the Co-Creation Lab enhances transdisciplinary research, empowers stakeholders, and drives innovations with real societal impact.