Four PEOPLE project teams of social science students, their academic and industry mentors from Slovenia, the UK, the Netherlands, and Czechia, are getting ready for the closing event of this year’s Learning Cycle. After they had been tirelessly working on their case studies, they will finally meet for the 2^nd PEOPLE Co-Creation Camp in Ljubljana on 3 and 4 July 2019.

As you might already know, for the past 2,5 years, the PEOPLE project has been developing and testing a learning and teaching approach that is based in project- and problem-based learning model. In our two Learning Cycles, the second of which is now coming to an end, social science and humanities students were working on real-life case studies in energy efficiency and sustainability, supported both by their academic mentors and industry partners. The student teams, their teachers, and industry representatives have experimented with people-centred design and development approaches to tackle business or industry challenges across two semesters in each Learning Cycle. They have jointly developed research plans, carried out ethnographic field research or experiments, analysed the results, co-creating potential solutions with their research participants. However, the learning process has not only had a considerable impact on the students involved, who have gained valuable skills in teamwork, interdisciplinary research, project design and management, and people-centred development approaches. From the beginning, the PEOPLE project’s goal was to impact the teaching process and the deepen the understanding of how social sciences and humanities can benefit the development processes in the energy efficiency and sustainability industries.

Co-Creation Camps are the finale of our Learning Cycles, where the four national teams get together to share and discuss the results of their work on individual case studies. They present their research and development methods, as well as their project results to an international public from academic, research, and business environments. Each Co-Creation Camp features a dedicated session and co-creation workshops, facilitated by a renowned practitioner of people-centred research, design, and development. Guess who will be our guest expert at the 2nd PEOPLE Co-Creation Camp – a world leading design anthropologist, Prof Dr Sarah Pink!

Sarah is Director of the Emerging Technologies Research Lab at Monash University in Melbourne, which undertakes critical interdisciplinary and international research into the social, cultural and experiential dimensions of the design, use and futures of new and emerging technologies. Read our interview with Sarah, featured in the 4th issue of the PEOPLE Newsletter (PDF).

At the 2^nd PEOPLE Co-Creation Camp, we will also share our experiences with the wider public and media at a PEOPLE event, hosted by the Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts (ZRC SAZU). The event, dedicated to developing people-centred solutions for a more sustainable future, will feature exciting keynote speakers, including Prof Sarah Pink (Monash University, AU) and Peter Pos (Alliander, NL), while you will also hear the perspective of Slovenian industry on the future of mobility and learn more about the PEOPLE case studies. If you are in Ljubljana on the 4th of July 2019, you are cordially invited to meet us there – stay tuned for more information!

(Meanwhile, see here how the 1^st PEOPLE Co-Creation Camp unfolded in Amsterdam in 2018, with design anthropologist Anna Kirah as our guest expert and an exciting event held at CIRCL. Or check out our Newsletters for more information on our activties, interviews, and more.)