Återpublicerat från Centrum för Publikt Entreprenörskap:
The grassroots organization Connectors Malmö is experimenting a new way of encouraging local commitment and citizen participation: located in the residential area of Persborg (Malmö, Sweden), the Pop-up Space is the World’s first crowdsourced room.
The Pop Up space is a temporary room that people get to co-create by voting for what they want to have in the room. Acting as a meeting place for Connectors to get together with the residents, the idea of the Pop Up Space is to
“develop a new system to allow local residents to co-create their neighborhood and to develop collaboration between the municipality, the housing agencies, and those who actually live in this neighborhood”, says Joshua Ng, co-founder of Connectors Malmö.
Indeed, when it comes to urban planning, Connectors have noticed that there is often a gap between people making important decisions (urbanists, architects) and actual residents of an area. Today, there is no real platform which takes in consideration the inhabitant’s opinion. With this project, Julieta Talavera, co-director, explains that:
“We think that we are sort of filling that gap with this space and project, and maybe, if this actually works, this can be a system or a model that can be used in other cities”
Prototyping
The Pop-up Space is currently going through what Connectors calls the “pilot period”: during 3 months, they hosted a series of workshops on local challenges, aiming to involve different stakeholders and members of the community. By using mainly visual material, those activities aimed to imagine together how to make the square and this neighborhood a better place.
The prototyping period finishes on the 15th of April: with a lot of people coming in and really good results, this experiment has been a success. The project is now about entering a phase of data analysis and experiences sharing. Connectors Malmö also aims to develop a business model they want to test out in few more neighborhoods in Malmö and in other European cities.
The Res&Hub
The Pop Up Space is part of a bigger project that Connectors is developing called the RES/HUB: in September 2015, if everything goes well, they will launch the Live-in-Lab, a new kind of residence for social entrepreneurs. Indeed, Connectors are opening up a call for a group of 6 to 9 individuals from all over the world to come to Malmö, live and work together to co-create solutions based on the needs the Pop Up Space has enabled to emphasize and understand. The residency will also be a place for the entrepreneurs to work on their own personal projects.
Interested in taking part in this project? You can join the waiting list by following this link.
Lisa Della Corte
Read more at www.connectorsmalmo.com