Teaser video Social Lab in Hong Kong

This august, in collaboration with the Jockey Club Make a Difference (MaD) School and the Good Lab, Kennisland organised the first Social Lab in Hong Kong. The whole process was filmed and edited.

40 Participants, including citizens, government officials, policymakers and students worked in two teams on two different cases:

• The first team focused on homeless people in Sham Shui Po++NeighbourhoodClick here for more information on Sham Shui Po., one of the poorest neighbourhoods in Hong Kong. The main question the team members, the homeless inhabitants of Sham Shui Po, professionals and policymakers asked themselves was: “What is it like to be homeless in Sham Shui Po?”.
• The second team focused on (lonely) elderly people in Sham Shui Po, to collect stories regarding the question “What is it like to be alone as an elderly person in Sham Shui Po?”.

Of course, the teams did not only do research on the two topics, but they also worked on generating new ideas that could bridge the gaps between the needs in the daily lives of the Sham Shui Po inhabitants and the system of government and other organisations which are supposed to help them.They worked on generating new ideas that bridge the gaps between the needs in the daily lives of inhabitants and the system of government and other organisations which are supposed to help them.

In two packed, pressure-cooker style weeks, participants followed all the steps++Feed ForwardRead more about our Feed Forward methodology in ‘Lab Practice’, our latest paper. of a Social Lab:

Step 1: Hunt for stories in the field
Step 2: Check and publish stories with citizens
Step 3: Generate new ideas and collaborations
Step 4: Prototype different kinds of solutions
Step 5: Collect more community feedback and sustain initiatives

They collected and wrote more than 60 blog posts++BlogRead all the stories and the reflections blogs here. and prototyped and tested several ideas. In fact, some teams are still continuing their work with the help of MaD. A more in-depth educational publication about the lessons learned and the methodology of the LabSprint is due next January.

• KL'ers involved
• Jos van Kuik jk@kl.nl
• Wieteke Vrouwe wv@kl.nl