General Help

What is LID?

Definition

It is an open, participatory and networked space for democratic innovation. A catalyst for projects and communities of research, development, prototyping and action aimed at building democratic solutions to city’s desires and problems.

Vision

LID aims to be a laboratory of local, state and global reference on democratic innovation for social transformation. It wants to be a catalyst for projects and communities of research, development, prototyping and action focused on building a fairer and more democratic city. To achieve this, we question and orient our activities to local and global players, always connected to the metropolitan territory, with the ambition of contributing to weave a network of Municipal Laboratories or Athenaeums of Social Experimentation (in culture, economy, democracy, etc.) at multiple scales.

Mission:

• To analyze and diagnose social problems and desires.
• To explore borders and new trends at the intersection of democracy, technology and the city.
• Promote processes and projects of reflection, research, prototyping and design that explore new ways of building a more democratic city.
• To connect people, knowledge, technical knowledge, practices, devices and social visions, facilitating learning and collaboration between communities, projects and public institutions.
• Contribute to the common good of its immediate surroundings, the neighbourhood, the city and the world, through the creation of networks and the production of prototypes and free resources, from a vision of democratic radicality and social transformation.    

Main objectives:

• To create an ecosystem of innovation of/from/for the citizenship tend to generate answers to problems and desires of the city and to social transformation.
• To facilitate the development of projects of Thought, Research, Innovation, Development and Prototyping with a critical vision and orientation to the common good.
• Promote these objectives by offering spaces, methodologies, devices, material, human and logistical resources.

Specific objectives:

• To establish a democratic and collaborative citizen space of thought, debate and action.
• Explore new methodologies of experimental, participatory and experiential work around democracy.
• Offer tools, resources and infraestructures (knowledge, technology, legal and economic advice, network…) for the project’s development.
• To promote and fund citizen research aimed at solving the problems of the city, its inhabitants and organisations in collaboration with academic, institutional and economic-professional research.
• To provide open resources and participatory spaces for the research of projects of the City Council itself and of the citizens.
• Prototype models of citizen science, social innovation and co-management and governance of urban labs.
• Generate a productive ecosystem of services around social and democratic innovation.
• To promote technological projects and prototypes, designed in a critical and participatory way and oriented to the common good.
• To promote around democracy new discourses and alternative knowledge, as well as pedagogical materials.
• To create an open infrastructure for gathering people and communities who are passionate about democracy, technologies and social transformations connected to them.
• To foster convergences or the creation of networks, communities, institutions and projects oriented to think and project solutions to city problems of academic, technological, social, community, business and public-municipal type.