23.01.2025
MAG-NET’s first consortium meeting took place in Celje this week
This week, the project partners met at Narodni dom in Celje for the first official consortium meeting of the MAG-NET project. The project, which kicked-off in December 2024 and was inaugurated with a unique opening event, has now been given its first concrete framework and the first working activities have already been outlined.
At the meeting, we familiarised ourselves with the management, evaluation and communication of the project activities, and presented the thematic work packages within which the project will establish new spaces, initiatives and other services in the cities of Celje and Prebold.
At IRI UL, we are the leaders of the methodological work package, which aims to develop a set of tools, methods and guidelines for the design and development of new services in cities, systematically and continuously involving the people who will use these solutions.
This method of people-centred development, which we have developed with the aim of involving people in a structured and effective way in the processes of implementing new solutions in cities, is called the Urban Real-Life Learning Lab (U-RLLL). It is a methodology that will be described both theoretically and in terms of implementation and will also help to plan and analyse the field work of the teams that will be working on specific areas.
The methodology will be developed for the groups (so called challenge owners) working on the five specific areas directly addressed by the project—affordable housing, sustainable mobility, energy communities, Industry 4.0 and city atmosphere. The methodology will be developed in several iterations, considering the findings of the groups that will use it for their work during the project and the results of the project evaluation.
At the end of the project, the methodology will be published in the form of a practical handbook, which will be transferable and useful for other similar cities or for city decision-makers and other urban actors who want to develop services and products tailored to the needs of their citizens.
The focus of the Urban Real-Life Learning Lab methodology is therefore the view that, to make good and useful decisions and solutions in cities, it is of utmost importance to involve the people for whom these solutions are intended in their design and implementation.