IDEA Awardee The Climate Living Lab

Origin of the IDEA…

At Artevelde University of Applied Sciences, we felt the need to better integrate Education for Sustainability within the curriculum. Especially ecologic themes such as climate change, biodiversity and circular economy are underrepresented in the curriculum. Moreover, we felt the need for more authentic real-life learning opportunities. Authentic learning opportunities are not difficult to find, they are readily available at our institute (ClimateFactory) and in our local community (ClimateLab). By combining formal (ClimateLab & ClimateFactory) and informal (ClimateFactory) learning opportunities we provided a broad range of options for our students, ranging from voluntary commitment to a 30 ECTS credits lab environment.

Each educational practice influences and reinforces the other. There is an exchange of expertise and ideas between the ClimateFactory and ClimateLab to ensure a coherent approach to glocal challenges. Different topics are dealt with such as food for thought, zero waste and circular economy, biodiversity, energy guzzlers and so on. Students define their topic field themselves and explore the challenges at hand, both at the university campus and in society. In interdisciplinary groups, they try to formulate and create concrete solutions to climate issues which often turn out to be a real eye-opener for many of the students!

The start…

The ClimateLab was a spin-off of the 3IDlab, a lab environment that we already offered at our institute; the latter focusing more on other sustainability and social issues than the ClimateLab. The ClimateFactory was built from scratch with a green office philosophy in mind. This means that any student should be able to contribute, be it entirely voluntary or through curriculum assignments. Elena Lievens and Bea Merckx promoted the initiative at different staff meetings, inviting lecturers to scan their course units for learning opportunities linked to the curriculum. In this way, students had a range of learning opportunities linked to the curriculum and the topic of climate change.

During the pandemic…

Unfortunately, due to the COVID pandemic, we could no longer work on the campuses themselves and had to switch our teaching process entirely. The ClimateFactory Festival with a ferry service of solar-powered boats, the Longest Veggie Table, a sustainable campus run and lots of climate change workshops had to be cancelled. The energy challenge between different campuses and a student’s home could no longer take place and so on. However, we continued collaborating via all kinds of digital channels and still managed to set up different activities and changes. For instance, we developed a climate-friendly digital archive for bachelor theses and research projects, thus avoiding heaps of paper consumption. We started a new project, ‘Green Oxygen’ to transform a courtyard into a green oasis with vegetable gardens for students, personnel and external stakeholders and could still meet outside with social distancing and face masks. Many subgroups created digital products such as an attractive, digital climate-friendly recipe booklet, or a plant poster with information about biodiversity, plant kilometres, the importance of peat, which plants to keep in your student room etc. In May 2021 we still managed to put up a corona-proof ClimateFactory Festival creating a real vibe with lots of climate-friendly inspiration and exchanges between students and lecturers.

Benefits…

The benefits of our initiative are on different levels:

• Curriculum level: Students are now more aware of climate issues and can work on their action competences and the relation to global citizenship. Lecturers were able to link their course content to climate issues.

• Institute level: The ClimateFactory’s goal was to address climate issues related to the institute (e.g. digitalization of Bachelor theses, vegetarian options in the student restaurant, international mobility) and their staff and students (e.g. mobility from and to the institute, students as consumers, etc.). We succeeded in putting these issues on the agenda and changing some of the ways things work.

• Local partnerships: We created local partnerships to work together on climate issues. These partnerships have resulted in other projects (e.g. a sustainability app and cooperation with the city of Ghent on different sustainability topics (e.g. food, circular economy, etc.)

Developing the IDEA further…

The GENE ideas award was warmly welcomed at our institute. We were very proud to win this prestigious prize and shared it in different newsletters and on social media. The prize allowed us to fully operationalise both initiatives, and they are well known throughout the Institute and among our partners (Ghent University, HoGent, City of Ghent, etc.)

The ClimateLab is integrated into the operation of Artevelde University of Applied Sciences. As for the ClimateFactory, we submitted a policy note to continue it with the commitment to further evolve into a sustainability hub and green office.