Living Lab

2022 Int'l Living Lab Forum - Social Innovations for Sustainable Smart Cities

From November 2nd to 4th, 2022, the International Living Lab Forum was held in Daegu, co-organized by FNF Korea, Daegu Technopark (Daegu TP), Korea Local Information Research & Development Institute (KLID) as well as European Network of Living Labs (ENoLL).

On the first day on November 2nd, the international participants participated in a city tour program after their arrival in Daegu City. The tour was designed to offer international participants basic information on the city. It included visits of historical and cultural places of Daegu City.

The main forum on the second day, the 3rd of November was opened by cultural performance by sand artist and string quartet. After the opening address of Gun-Woo Do, President of Daegu TP, Frederic Spohr, Head of FNF Korea and Myung Kyun Park, Deputy Minister of KLID also delivered welcoming address to the participants of the forum. Prof. Dr. Evdokimos I. Konstantinidis, Chairperson of the ENoLL Executive Board who couldn’t participate physically gave a congratulatory speech via video message.

The first session started with the topic of “Inclusive Social Innovation in Europe” where the living lab experts from Germany, Britain and Spain present on various kinds of living labs of their respective cities: Rico Herzog from CityScienceLab on how Hamburg reflects the needs of care workers through digital technology to its urban planning; Martha King from Knowle West Media Center on Bristol’s creative living lab practices that combines art and digital technology; Artur Serra from i2cat foundation on how Catalonia has transformed itself by integrating digital and social technologies.

The second session focused on “Best Practices – Living Labs in Korea” and introduced Korean approaches to the living lab projects via case presentation of two major cities in Korea known for its smart city projects, Daegu by Dr. Hee Dae Kim from Daegu Technopark and Goyang by Eun-hee Park from Goyang Industry Promotion Agency. They both presented various projects that shows how these two cities have realized the living lab concept that involves citizen participation and digital technology.

Each session was followed by a lively discussion session; the panellists added interesting comments to the topic and online and offline audience could raise questions directly to the speakers. As the presentations vary both topic- and country-wise, a wide range of ideas and opinions has emerged during the two sessions including differences of European and Korean approaches to the living lab projects.

On Nov. 4th, the living lab topic was further explored via a workshop. The participants included the speakers/panellist from the forum, citizens experienced with living labs and local government officials. The workshop was designed highly interactive and run by skilled facilitators.

Along with the two speakers who gave presentations on the day before, Martha King and Rico Herzog, Eunji Kang from MicroMassive added some interesting aspects on living lab with her presentation on sustainable, ecological innovation programmes. The participants were grouped in 4 teams and each presentation was followed by various group activities which was the highlight of the workshop. The activities varied from group discussion to art practices. Through the workshop, the participants could delve deeper into the topic of living lab as well as witness and experience the process of living lab itself.