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We are pleased to announce the UNIC Thematic Lines CityLabs Award to be presented at the first UNIC Thematic Conference, “Urban resilience, sustainability, and the future of inclusive post-industrial societies,” hosted by Malmö University from 7–9 May 2025. This award recognizes outstanding CityLab initiatives that apply innovative and impactful methodologies to address societal challenges in Europe’s post-industrial cities.
The UNIC Centre for City Futures is a transnational urban living laboratory for societal impact to support transformations with our cities and communities. A one stop shop for UNIC universities to engage with cities and communities, we orchestrate collaboration and co-creation between various urban actors to tackle our most pressing urban challenges. The Centre for City Futures Directors broker and manage sustainable structured partnerships with our cities, matchmaking collaborations that can leverage resources, realise strategically focussed efforts and connect societal actors for transformative impact.
Our professional team of Co-creation Specialists bring co-creation and participatory practice design expertise to collaborative initiatives on a case by case basis: providing expert inputs to devise, design and deliver evidence informed, best practice and fit for purpose models, tools and methods for engagement. They work to support an enabling environment, integrating and building capacity for mainstreaming and harnessing best practice for societally engaged higher education.
A CityLab is a specific instance of an applied real-life living lab case, initiative or challenge being tackled through partnership, collaborative action and co-creation between our universities, cities and citizens. CityLabs use real-life challenges as starting points and integrate participatory approaches like ‘impact-by-design’ into both education and research. They bring students, researchers, academia, citizens, and city stakeholders such as municipalities, the private sector and NGOs together to address societal challenges faced by our post-industrial superdiverse cities.
Collectively UNIC CityLabs are enabling higher education and academic expertise to be working for and with City actors in ways that can become more than a sum of their parts, harnessing the power of the many to realise a more sustainable, just and equitable future for all.
Examples of UNIC CityLabs:
• Course Integration: CityLabs in the Curriculum – RePIC CityLabs week
• Engaged Research: CityLabs in UNIC4ER Seed Fund
• City-Led Challenge: Idea Competition
• Innovating and Piloting replicable Methods and Models: Blended Intensive Programme
Best Practice Collaboration
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Good Practice:
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Applying co-creation methods in an internal collaboration within your university (academics and students) for transformative impact in higher education
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Better Practice:
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Applying co-creation in collaboration with actors outside your university (city stakeholders and citizens) for transformative impact in society
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Best Practice:
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Applying co-creation in collaboration with externally (academics, students, city stakeholders, and citizens) and with other UNIC alliance partners (maximum of 3 UNIC partners)
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Best Practice Participatory Co-Design
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Good Practice :
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Engages actors from across the quadruple helix (academia, public sector, private sector, NGO/citizen) in a once off event
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Better Practice: |
Engages actors from across the quadruple helix (academia, public sector, private sector, NGO/citizen) in multiple activities at key stages in design and development of the initiative
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Best Practice:
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Engages actors from across the quadruple helix (academia, public sector, private sector, NGO/citizen) as equal partners from start to end in the initiative and has multi-mode and method engagement
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Impact: Evidence, Integration and Legacy
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Good Practice:
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Challenge and Needs evidence base: The project aligns with the societal need and challenge-based focus of UNIC Center for City Futures. It can demonstrate the evidence for the need/gap and impact. Can articulate both the societal challenge being tackled and the impact of the CityLabs
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Better Practice:
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Integrated with Centre for City Futures and/or Roadmaps: The CityLab addresses significant societal challenges from the local UNIC City Futures Roadmaps or key capacity building deliverable
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Best Practice:
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Legacy, Scalability and Replicability: The CityLab is not only integrated with CCF and/or City Futures Roadmaps but has strong legacy potential - securing interest from key actors around a future opportunity such as replication or scaling.
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• Each co-lead applicant in the selected CityLabs initiative will receive 500 euros in support (or equivalent in support or goods), through the UNIC fund at the applicant’s home institution.
• The prize money may be spent on courses, workshops, books, congresses or trainings (nationally and internationally), or international travel (related to work).
• For details on allocation rules, please refer to the rules specified by your institution.
• 16 March 2025: Deadline for CityLab Award applications
• 1 April 2025: Applications reviewed and final selections made by an appointed jury.
• May 2025: Awardees announced at the Malmö conference, with invited poster presentations to showcase their CityLab.
A peer judging panel will be formed with representatives from WP3 CityLabs experts and WP5 TL representatives. Each application will be evaluated by two peer judges from universities not associated with the application, using a standardized scoring system based on the selection criteria.
• Submit applications to conference[at]unic.eu with a PDF summary of the CityLab (filename format: CityLab_Name_Project_Title) and a brief statement on its innovative or impactful methodology.
• Please specify the names and institutions of the representatives from the co-lead institutions implementing the City Lab.
• Applications close on 16 March 2025 (23:59 CEST).
For questions or further details, please contact conference[at]unic.eu
We look forward to your applications and to celebrating the best CityLabs practices at the UNIC Thematic Conference!
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