Engagement and (Social) Entrepreneurship - Driving Social Change with the CC-Lab

24 April 2023, by Felicitas Marchlowitz

Photo: Jan-Paul Greve

The project "Campus meets Community-Lab" (CC-Lab) of the Research Office for Social Innovation (ROSI) is testing a co-creative teaching and research space at the University of Hamburg (UHH) using the methodology of community-based research (CBR), in which students work together with (civil) society actors to address central social challenges through social science research.

The cooperation partner for the CC-Lab is the Hamburg pilot project "Haus des Engagements" (HdE), which is testing an innovative networking space for a community of committed people, creative people, founders and non-profit companies, where joint solutions for social challenges are to be developed. The HdE faces the challenge of meeting the needs of this heterogeneous group of actors and establishing organizational and communication channels that contribute to the actual networking of the actors. How such a place has to be organized and designed so that it becomes a place of encounter, exchange and innovation for the different groups is therefore to be researched and developed together in the CC-Lab.

Currently, the HdE is testing its concept in the betahaus Hamburg and will move to its final location, the Neue Amt Altona (NAA), a user-supported co-working house combining entrepreneurial, spatial and social concepts in an integrative overall concept, by 2024.

For students of social sciences and economics, the CC-Lab offers a special opportunity to gain practical experience and inspiration for their own project ideas in an environment where civic and entrepreneurial concepts are combined to drive social innovation. They benefit from the co-creative teaching experience by being able to expand transdisciplinary skills as well as a professionally relevant network. Ultimately, they will be empowered to think in terms of social entrepreneurial action and to align themselves with the needs of urban and civil society in order to contribute to the sustainable implementation and change processes in the context of HdE.