Codesign master student Rie Maktabi is, apart from her studies in our program, also a student employee at Mindlab. To top it off, Rie has now relocated to the French innovation lab “La 27e Region” in Paris, a close collaboration partner of Mindlab. For the next six months Rie will be blogging from “La 27e Region” in Paris. Over to Rie:
The point of the collaboration between MindLab and La 27e Region is to exchange ideas and knowledge and to inspire one another.
What is “La 27e Region”?
“La 27e Région” is a public innovation lab for local and national administrations in particular. They work with social innovation, service design and social sciences and aim to use their methods to radically change the way public policies are designed. The team consists of service designers, political science practitioners and project managers. So far, “La 27e Région” has conducted more than twenty action-research experiments in partnership with nine regional administrations within three different programs, “Territoires en Résidences”, “Re acteur Public“ and “La Transfo”.
They are also a physical space, called “Superpublic”- shared with young freelance service designers and entrepreneurs and the ministry called SGMAP, who all adds to the creative atmosphere, where innovation and new collaborations are part of the everyday life. They host conferences, book launches, workshops and training sessions.
“La 27e Region” has been inspired by MindLab when developing their innovation lab, and I’m sure that we can get as much inspiration from them as well.
Let’s exchange ideas and knowledge!
I’m curious on how they work with their methodology, and I’m excited about trying out all sorts of methods during the next months. I’m also looking forward to discover how the culture and the French society deal with the problems that we struggle with at home, for instance education, healthcare and unemployment. The French government does not have a gov-lab as MindLab. It is going to be interesting to find out why they do not and how far they are from getting one. I’m very fund of the idea of developing this “Superpublic” -CO-working place for service designers and entrepreneurs. All these input from “outside” makes the environment even more inspiring.
Service design is in Denmark a new way of dealing with design. Implementing design in public administrations is new to the government and for the designers. My colleague Laura, who works as service designer at “La 27e Region”, told me that they have to ask for a master program in Service design at her university “l’Ecole Nationale de Création Industrielle” just as we did the at my university at “The Royal Danish Academy of Design“. Because this approach is so new, exchanging methods and experiences becomes even more essential for our profession.
Projects to join
I’m going to take part of several projects, during my stay at “La 27e Region”:
La Territoires en Résidence – at “Hopital Nord”
A multidisciplinary team is going to some place in France to discover possible better solutions for a specific case. This time it’s a team of Service Designers, Sociologist and Urban architects that goes the hospital “Hopital Nord” placed in the North of Marseille. The team goes three times for one week during six months, to discover better innovative solutions, by prototyping possible solutions with the users.
Re acteur Publique – La Pointeuse
La Pointeuse is part the new program “Re acteur Publique”. The project seeks to shape the future of public administrations, by the use of service design tools. “La 27e Region” propose a platform for experimentation, collaboration and creative thinking through workshops with carefully selected participants (researchers, experts and people who work in specific in the field.) All knowledge that is gained from the workshop, is then shared on a meeting with a broader scope of civil servants in order to spread the knowledge and get more reflections and reactions. The idea is that they get so inspired, that they will go home and test some new ideas.The project is facilitated and designed by “La 27e Region” and the service design company “Plaussible Possible”, who also have their working space at “Superpublic.”
Design for Europe
The English Lab NESTA host an event called “Design for Europe”, which seeks to focus on how and why implementing design is a great tool to generate innovative and creative solutions. “MindLab” and “La 27e Region” are going to host an event together here in Paris, where existing Labs are invited to join forces for inspire and exchange knowledge.
The Innovation guide
MindLab is working on a new “Innovation Guide” that gives the possibility to public administration and others, to get inspired on how to gain new ideas and how to involve the end-user in the process, by using Service Design methods. I will describe the methods I discover here at “La 27e Region” and at “Super Public” in order to inspire the making of the new Innovation Guide.
I’m very excited to be part of “La 27e Region” and I’m looking forward to investigate their approach, methods and to be a part of this inspiring studio space “Super Public”. Each month I will make a blog post and a visual postcard – sharing my observations, inspiration, thoughts and new ideas. – Stay tuned…
