🏭Co-creating a Hub
My hub is your hub ! A co-creation process with the municipality led by the Geneva FCH team to keep an old industrial site up and running.
What is this tool about and why is it relevant ?
The official name of the FCH in Geneva is la MACO ( MAnufacture COllaborative), which refers to a collective of several associations with a shared goal of revitalizing a former industrial area owned by the local Municipality. La MACO aims to transform the area into a hub for innovative form of collaborations for digital and traditional fabrications.
The Geneva FCH exists today as a fully functional entity, thanks to a fruitful but challenging long-term collaboration with the Municipality and other interested parties. This collaboration led to the creation of the current MACO, which is a result of the co-creation strategy designed and implemented by representatives of La MACO. Here, this strategy is presented as an inspirational case for other FCHs or organizations that are aiming to establish an innovative and productive hub through a complex and multi-partnered process.
The co-creation strategy implemented by La MACO consists of a series of actions and workshops aimed at designing the vision and governance of the local FCH, as well as the spaces and functions of the building, with targeted audiences aligned to the objectives of different stakeholders.
This approach involves working closely with the Municipality and relevant stakeholders of the industrial area, primarily craftsmen, due to two main reasons:
The Municipality is the owner of the entire zone and plays a crucial role in developing the Geneva FCH project, in line with its strategic plan for climate and circular economy. Additionally, they were committed since the beginning to establishing a collaborative process with all relevant parties.
Lack of mutual trust between the Municipality, the craftsmen and the neighbourhood
The objectives of implementing a collaborative strategy were :
To promote transparency in discussions and negotiations about the future of the area and to encourage communication about decisions made to prevent conflicts
To create a networks of local actors and foster relationships and to a lesser extent create awareness and acquire skills
to collaboratively transform a building, an area, a neighbourhood and ultimately the city
Local Outcomes 👍
By implementing a process of co-creative actions the Geneva FCH was able to :
→ promote transparency in discussions and negotiations about the future of the area and to encourage communication about decisions made to prevent conflicts. This led to an increase in ownership of the project
→ build trust for a solid partnership between the Municipality and the local stakeholders
→ create a networks of local actors and foster relationships
→ develop awareness, acquire skills, and design a governance model that takes into account the available skills, resources, and capacities of all participating partners.
→ design the actual spaces of the Geneva FCH and quantify the resources needed to renovate the building and design the actual spaces of the Hub in alignment with the city development plans
Organisational Practices
The use of this tool contributed to the following changes in local organisational practices each of them may relate to some of the three foundational aspects of a FCH: Vision , Community and Infrastructure.
OP1. Activating interactions and facilitating connections and collaborations among the different actors active in urban environments
OP4. Engaging with and creating new institutions through experimentation and prototyping of diverse assemblages of actors and functions
OP5. Bottom-up deliberation for defining the needs and conditions for a community coalescing around a physical space
→ A co-creation programme like the one described above, facilitates connections and interactions among different actors and aids bottom-up deliberation by engaging the community directly, ensuring diverse input, shared ownership, and tailored solutions. It promotes consensus, transparency, and creativity, resulting in a community-defined physical space, fostering long-term commitment and inclusivity.
→ It has been used also as an experimental method to establish dialogues and collaborations with the Geneva Municipality
Key Steps
Find here a list of fundamental steps you should follow if you want to organise a co-creative process for your Fab City Hub.
Define the organising team, including facilitators
Identify the location where it will take place
Set the date with a reasonable delay
Agree on the community/target whose presence is essential
Send invites to the community/target audience
Follow up and share online communication
Decide the facilitation tools that will be used
Identify key speakers and the role of facilitators
Share the final programme
Share the call sheet with the organising team
Set the space and the logistic
Animate the session
Share the results of the session via e-mail
Summary table
| Characteristics | |
|---|---|
Difficulty | Medium/Difficult |
Duration | The first co-creation session lasted about 6 hours. The process of organising the session and summarising the outcomes can take several months. The most challenging part is to ensure that all relevant stakeholders are engaged and available to participate. |
Facilitator I Participants | First Session: F= 5 (workshop facilitators, logistic, drawings) P= 70 Following Sessions (more informal): F= 1 (workshop facilitator), P= 10 |
Setting | Offline |
Contact | cristina@onlfait.ch ( Cristina Olivotto from Onl’fait ) |
Tagging System |
Do you want to learn more ?
Find below some useful links to better understand the process of co-creating a hub and what Geneva is doing:
→ Find below an article (in french)about the transformation process of the industrial area of la Maco
→ Check the specific page about Geneva in the CENTRINNO web page to have general info about their work and their actions towards the setting up of their FCH
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