🏛️ Module 3: EDUCATIONAL Dimension
The Educational Dimension of Pavlos Melas Municipality Park
How can heritage sites become transformative learning environments that engage citizens, foster innovation, and promote sustainability through participatory education and real-world experimentation through living labs?
Key Concepts
Concept 1: Living Laboratory
Definition:
A Living Laboratory (Living Lab) is a user-centered open innovation ecosystem that integrates research and innovation through co-creation in real-world environments. Urban living labs view the whole city as a laboratory where citizens and stakeholders actively participate in designing, developing, implementing, testing, and evaluating their creations in their actual use context.
Why It’s Needed:
Living labs address complex urban challenges by bringing together diverse stakeholders such as citizens, SMEs, researchers, academia etc through experimentation (Source: European Network of Living Labs, 2024).
What is the Benefit of this Concept?
Living laboratories provide the following advantages:
- Learning by doing: Living labs integrate research and innovation processes to develop new products, services, and solutions.
- Diverse Stakeholder Participation: With living labs, meaningful participation can arise which can create real solutions to community needs.
- Real-world testing: Innovations are developed and evaluated in actual use contexts, producing practical and applicable results.
- Knowledge creation: Generates useful insights that can be adopted in other urban contexts, accelerating sustainable transformation.
- (Source: European Network of Living Labs, 2024)
Four Phases of Living Lab Implementation
The following framework is adapted from the iSCAPE Citizen Science Guide and the European Commission’s Social Innovation Playbook to guide stakeholders in implementing living lab approaches:
Phase 1: Co-Design & Pre-Experimentation
Goal: Understand the local context, identify stakeholders, and create conditions for participation before any technical or scientific activity begins.
Core Question to Ask: Who are we and what are we trying to change?
Key Activities:
- Clarify purpose and relevance (e.g.,increasing local air quality).
- Identify and connect with local communities, authorities, and potential partners.
- Review existing projects or policies relevant to your focus area.
- Choose an accessible,venue and schedule a warm-up event with identified local parties.
- Prepare materials and tools to design the first workshop.
- Promote engagement through clear, open communication and welcoming formats
Educational Integration: Students can organize a community asset map, record oral histories, and create a needs assessments chart as part of coursework, then the techers and managers can organize an event to promote the vision for the community.
Phase 2: Experimentation & Design
Goal: Conduct collaborative experiments that addresses the priorities that arose after Phase 1.
Core Question to Ask: What matters most and how can we explore it together?
Key Activities:
- Citizens and students conduct real-world measurements and observations where they collect data.
- Data is gathered collaboratively across locations and time periods, and teams coordinate via shared tools (Google Sheets, Smart Citizen platform).
- Design small-scale pilot projects to test concepts derived from the collected data of Phase 1.
- Establish feedback mechanisms for continuous learning.
Educational Integration: Design project-based learning modules, and coordinate learning projects centered on real challenges.
Phase 3: Experimentation & Learning by Doing
Goal: Assess the impact of the pilot projects on communities, adapt these and repeat.
Core Question to Ask: What happens when we act and learn together? How can we make the first results better?
Key Activities:
- Translate collected data from pilot projects into accessible visual formats such as maps, narratives, presentations.
- Encourage reflection (personal) and analysis (scientific) for assessing the impact
- Adjust and refine based on feedback and lived experiences.
Educational Integration: How to encourage reflection? What are the methods of assessment? Create a course on different research methods to increase students’ exposure to different methods for assessing impact.
Phase 4: Reflection & Scaling
Goal: Evaluate, document, and share feedback from participants.
Core Question: How do we share and sustain what we’ve learned?
Key Activities:
- Reflect on challenges, successes, and lessons learned.
- Share results publicly (via blogs, community events, social media, or reports).
- Develop toolkits, guidelines, and educational materials to support replication.
- Integrate successful innovations into formal curricula and institutional practices
Educational Integration: Students can become active participants in developing educational materials, and participate in knowledge exchange networks.
Sources:
European Commission. (2020). Social Innovation Playbook: Reimagine Fashion. European Social Innovation Competition 2020.
iSCAPE Project. (2020, August 15). Citizen science guide: An actionable guide for Living Labs [Guide]. https://it.scribd.com/document/472536199/iSCAPE-CitizenScience-Guide
Concept 2: Community Learning
Definition:
Community Learning is a process which people learn ways of enhancing their capacity for individual activity that eventually benefits a collective goal. It emphasizes participatory democracy, empowerment, and education through the engagement of people within their communities to effect positive change in their environements.
Why It’s Needed:
Community learning empowers individuals and groups with skills to effect change within their communities. It engages people in problem-solving and decision-making, creating a learning process toward behavioral change. This approach addresses community needs collaboratively while promoting social justice, equality, and sustainable development.
What is the Benefit of this Concept?
- Enhanced capacity building: Community Learning Centres (CLCs) and other community organizations play a central role in the empowerment of the local community through education. Community Learning Centers develops skills, knowledge, and confidence among community members.
- Social cohesion: CLCs strengthen relationships and networks within communities through shared learning experiences.
- Participatory democracy: CLCs enable citizens to actively engage in shaping their environments and futures.
- Cultural exchange and education: CLCs create opportunities for diverse groups to learn from one another, while fostering understanding for one another.
- Sustainable solutions: CLCs ensure that development initiatives reflect local knowledge and are adapted to community contexts.(Source: UNESCO, 2015)
Lessons from the Good Practice
Using the systematic framework based on the Quintuple Helix Model, let’s explore how the Pavlos Melas project teaches valuable educational lessons that can be adapted to strengthen community bonds, promote inclusive learning, and activate civic spaces through education.
1) Integrating Local Heritage into Academic Programs
Lesson: The Pavlos Melas project demonstrates how multiple historical narratives (military heritage, Greek refugee history, archaeological findings) can coexist and be preserved within a single space to be accessible and educational for diverse audiences.
Practical Application: Educational institutions can develop integrated curricula that combine archaeology, local history, heritage and migration studies. Universities can create interdisciplinary programs that use the transformed space as a living laboratory for historical, social, and environmental education.
Implementation Steps:
- Partner with local museums and heritage sites to create curriculum-linked educational programs
- Develop teacher training workshops on using local heritage sites as educational opportunities
- Create digital archives connecting classroom learning to physical heritage spaces
- Establish student research projects that document local transformation stories
2) Building Strategic Partnerships Between Educational Institutions and Heritage Sites
Lesson: The Pavlos Melas project demonstrates successful long-term collaboration between multiple stakeholders that can collectively create advocacy for causes with transformative results that benefit educational and cultural goals simultaneously.
Practical Application: Schools and universities can become active stakeholders in urban transformation projects, contributing research, student projects, and educational programming that supports urban development while enriching academic offerings.
Implementation Steps:
- Establish formal “Heritage-Education Partnerships” with concrete agreements between heritage sites and educational institutions
- Develop joint programming where schools use redesigned heritage sites as case studies for specialized learning experiences
- Create student internships and volunteer programs at heritage sites
- Organize continuing education opportunities for community members participating in heritage programs
3) Environmental Education Through Real-World Urban Transformation
Lesson: The Pavlos Melas project provides concrete examples of sustainability in action such as soil rehabilitation, air pollution reduction, noise pollution mitigation, and heat island effect reduction. The project demonstrates how environmental benefits of green buildings can be measured and communicated effectively.
Practical Application: Create “Living Laboratory” programs where students conduct ongoing research on the environmental impacts of urban transformation projects with all effects discussed with all stakeholders.
Implementation Steps:
- Create student research partnerships with environmental scientists and urban planners
- Develop data collection protocols that students can implement over multiple academic years
- Connect classroom learning about sustainability to measurable outcomes in transformation projects
- Design assessment methods where students test themselves against conservation methods used in green buildings
4) Transforming Underutilized Spaces into Creative Learning Hubs
Lesson: The Pavlos Melas project shows how abandoned spaces can be reimagined as creative and commercial places alongside educational facilities. Inclusion of workshops and study programs in museums can be integrated with entrepreneurial and creative activities.
Implementation Steps:
- Develop partnerships with local entrepreneurs and creative professionals
- Establish mentorship programs connecting students with local innovators and creators
- Create programs that integrate business incubation, cultural programming, and traditional education
5) Promoting Cross-Disciplinary Learning
Lesson: The Pavlos Melas project integrates multiple disciplines: urban planning, environmental science, history, archaeology, cultural studies, economics, and public policy, demonstrating how a single transformed space can serve multiple educational purposes simultaneously.
Implementation Steps:
- Develop team-teaching approaches where instructors from different disciplines collaborate on heritage site-based projects
- Create capstone projects that require students to integrate knowledge from multiple academic areas
- Establish research partnerships between different academic departments focused on heritage studies
6) Strengthening Educational Institutions as Community Development Partners
Lesson: Educational institutions can become active partners in community development and advocacy. Schools can teach civic engagement through participation in local transformation projects, helping students understand how sustained collective action can create positive change.
Implementation Steps:
- Create student councils that engage with local government and community organizations
- Develop documentation projects where students record and share community transformation stories online
- Build stronger connections between schools and local communities through active participation in transformation projects
These lessons demonstrate how heritage sites can transform into powerful educational platforms that build knowledge, foster collaboration, and inspire action across generations, creating sustainable learning opportunities for broader community impact.
With an understanding of how educational co-creation is achieved through living labs for urban regeneration projects, let’s now turn to the core concepts of the Social Dimension—Community Well-Being, and Community Inclusion