THE STORY

Hello,

Welcome to European Medialab Praxis MOOC, a project supported by the European Erasmus + Programm.

This experience is the result of a two-year experimentation involving organisations from five european countries : Urban Prod in France (1), Lasipalatsi Media Center in Finland (2), Cubic in Austria (3), Arci Solidarità Onlus in Italy (4), Bildungsmarkt in Germany (5).

Together, we experimented, tested and modelled a European network of five medialabs aiming to foster civic youth participation.

By constantly testing our method, we did more than we could possibly imagine.

We suceeded in prototyping a unique european medialab without borders.

With this MOOC, we offer you the opportunity to explore our vision, our method and the stories behind the prototypes we created.

We wish you a very pleasant virtual visit !

The European Medialab Praxis Team

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THE STORY

Designing Medialab Prototypes

The European MediaLab Praxis (EMP) project questions the foundations of a “medialab”, a fuzzy or "liquid" label resulting from an experimentation of the MIT. At a time when media play a decisive role in accompanying the understanding and reading of the world, traditional media, social media, citizen media are devices, companies, tools that allow a genuine release of citizen empowerment. By building a European network of medialabs, this project offers the opportunity to compare European experiments conducted with different users, in different social and cultural contexts.

At the beginning of this experimentation, there were six different organisations from six european countries : Urban Prod (France), Lasipalatsi Media Centre (Finland), Bildungsmarkt (Germany), Arci Solidarità Onlus (Italy), Cubic (Austria) and Superact (United Kingdom). Unfortunately, because of economical issues, Super Act left the project in the second phase.

During the two-year experimentation, our challenge was to determine the real impacts of our actions in a permanent context of digital divide. After that, we would have to accompany other organisations and structures to develop their own prototypes.

To make that happen, each organisation had to set a trio comprising one media content creator, one social worker and one youngster (18 to 30 years old) who would meet four times, during the four phases of the project.

Phase 1 : Reflections on popular education, professional inclusion and digital practices

Meet the team

The first phase of the project officially started in September 2016 with the preparation of a launching event at Urban Prod’s Marsmedialab located in Marseille (south of France). The program included one transnational meeting and one training session to reflect on popular education, professional inclusion and digital practices. From the 14th to the 17th of December 2016, we started to build our methodology and define a common editorial line. During the same period, French experts, academics, young people, partners and professionals from the social and economical sector were participating in the "EMP Night School", one week of debate, audiovisual practice and presentation of european centres for educational innovations.

The Lab Zero

The Medialab Prado

The Fabrique

Marthe Pommié, Raphaël Besson and Boris Pétric present european centres for educational innovation.

First Transnational Meeting

When thinking of the first phase, it is funny to remember the way we first said hello to each other. Some of us imposed “la bise”, others their hugs, the rest stuck to the formal way of shaking hands. Apart from being anecdotal and stereotypical, this memory illustrates the whole lot of communication issues we had in the beginning. For example, the French and Italian partners had the habit to use the word “Mediation” in numerous contexts. It could mean, “Facilitation”, “Animation”, “Mediation”, “Arbitration” and more. The French partners even had a profession called “Médiateur numérique”, something they translated into “Digital Mediator”, which was still difficult to understand for the rest of the group. Because we were having trouble understanding the specifities of each other's contexts, we created our own dictionary, with inescapable words like “Raum”, german word meaning “Room” and “Space” or “Medialukutaito”, finish word meaning “Media Literacy”. To put our visions into perspective, we also decided on a common baseline, a declaration of intention summarising what we believed, shared and planned to do. We called it the "Manifesto".

After eight months of work on cultural specificities, we were ready to build our prototypes and the methodological materials for their analysis .

Phase 2 : Prototyping Medialabs Projects

In June 2017, we entered the second phase of the project. The second transnational meeting occured from the 6th to the 10th of June 2017 in Innsbruck (Austria). During one week, we decided on our research framework and defined guidelines to summarise the ideas we had of our idealistic medialabs. For the next six months, our task was to design prototypes according to the needs of each organisation. That meant responding to local issues, using available tools, focusing on short terms experiments and enrolling people beyond the main core of the European Medialab Praxis team. The six portraits below present a picture of our beliefs and expectations at the beginning of the second phase. All through the project, we had to confront them to our realities by evaluating if our prototypes fitted our framework and guidelines. If not, we would have to adjust both our methodological materials and our prototypes.

Second Transnational Meeting

Our beliefs and expectations

Digital Gap

Social Inclusion

Safe Space for Youth

European Network

Cultural Appropriation

Professional Development

Visiting the Bäckerei, a third place located in Innsbruck

Phase 3 : European-wide Ewperimentation of Citizen Medialabs

The third phase of the project officially started in January 2018. From the 19th to the 23rd of February 2018, we organised the third transnational meeting in the premises of Bildungsmarkt located in Berlin. Its purpose was an exchange of practices between the partners. A critical feedback and a documentation work helped the evolution of the tools created during the second phase. By presenting the diversity of our approaches, territories, public, staffs, methods and ecosystems, we understood the value of a European network in our development processes. The European Medialab Praxis project definitely helped us in understanding our prototypes specificities and turning them into qualities.

Third Transnational Meeting

Arci Solidarita's perspective

Bildungsmarkt's perspective

Urban Prod's perspective

Lasipalatsi Media Centre's perspective

Cubic's perspective

Each member of the consortium had 6 months to develop the concept of Medialab in his/her organisation, carry out workshops with young people and evaluate this work through the medialab framework and the guideline produced during the second transnational meeting. More than a prototyping work, we were involved in an action-research process to deconstruct our working methods and provide objective basis for practice analysis. We relied on sound, image, text, and video contents to illustrate our results. We had to be able to explain our work.

Fourth Transnational Meeting

Phase 4 : Modelling and Spreading

The fourth phase of the project officially started in January 2018. From the 27th to the 31st of August 2018, we organised the fourth and final transnational meeting at kaapelitehdas, a former cable factory converted to a cultural centre in Helsinki. Our mission was to finish the dissemination online platform and spread our results. We organised trainings for youngsters and youth workers, we visited centres for cultural and digital innovation, we discovered a modern and creative youth community at Digitalents.

The project ended with a wonderful dissemination event at Helsinki City hall where we finally had the opportunity to share our discoveries and confront our final results with people from outside the project. The openness and the diversity of the public (smart cities, gamers, cultural engineers, researchers, youth workers, institutions…) brought us new challenges to explore in future experimentations.

Explore Our Method >>>

5 visions of our European Medialab Network

Watch the dissemination event

THE STORY

THE METHOD

THE PROTOTYPES

THE WIKI

THE TEAM