Comon

Urban Living Lab
Innovation ecosystems
Design thinking
Social innovation

De Krook is a collaboration between the library of Ghent, the University of Ghent, and research institute imec. Together, these partners aim to create an environment where people living and working in Ghent can experience a dynamic view of the future. Our goal is to not only inform and inspire citizens about future-oriented subjects, but also to engage them in molding this future through bottom-up innovation processes, co-creation and collective tinkering with innovative solutions.

Therefore, the partners of De Krook are building theme-based clusters of activities, situated on the intersection of technology on the one hand, and societal challenges on the other. The activities within such themes are aimed at involving citizens, bringing knowledge together, and transforming this knowledge into action through rapid materialization and collective experimentation. As such, De Krook and the experiments act as a centripetal force to discuss and shape common futures.

we at imec-mict-UGent facilitates this by designing and implementing community-driven, citizen-centric processes, tools, and methodologies such as civic crowdsourcing, generative co-creative methods, design sprints, interaction/UX design, setting up experiments, field trials, rapid prototyping, etc.

Partners: imec, City of Ghent, De Krook, Public Library Ghent, AVANSA, Leap Forward, Urgent.fm

Project duration: 2021 – ...

Contact: Bastiaan Baccarne