Internships, graduation assignments, or just a useful and fun project, all can be done at the Urban Living Lab Breda!
What is the Urban Living Lab?
Are you still looking for an internship, graduation assignment, or just a fun project? Or are you investigated with the city of Breda and do you have an amazing idea on how to change things for the better? The Urban Living Lab Breda offers tons of possibilities and people of all ages and nationalities are welcome. Let’s break down what the Urban Living Lab Breda entails.
Communities
The projects of the Urban Living Lab Breda are organized in two ways. The first one is communities, in which stakeholders not only learn what a certain issue entails but also actively work on this issue and get lessons out of it for the future. The four communities of the Urban Living Lab Breda are:
1. “Urban Agriculture”. To give an example of a project that took place within this community: The colleges of Avans and Curio worked together, since Avans had robots and Curio had greenhouses in which these robots could work. As a social initiative, neighbourhood units and gentleman farmers also joined the project. Together they thought of questions, such as where in the city can we place the robot? And who can make use of this robot? Companies and students from multiple universities worked on the answers to these questions. You can check all activities from all communities via this link.
2. "Smart Society". The keyword of this community is ‘digitalization’. Within the ‘smart society’ community, the stakeholders mainly figure out to what extent residents can influence collected data and what happens to this data. You can think about trying to create an ecosystem of recognition of data, control, and ownership for Breda, for instance.
3. “Livable city”. Projects in this community can for example be about abandoned buildings and how to repurpose them. In this community the stakeholders also think of what the Dutchies call the 3g’s of Breda “gezelligheid, groen, grenzeloos” (literally: ‘sociability, green, borderless’) and how these things will change in Breda in the upcoming decades.
4. “Urban Culture”. Businesses and organizations in Breda such as Pier15, Graphic Matters, Blind Walls Gallery, Nine Yards, and the municipality work together in this community. They hope to organize a pitching contest later this year, in which young people up to 27 years old can pitch ideas to ensure positive changes are made in Breda regarding the urban culture.
The municipality decided it is important to focus on digitalization, an inclusive city, energy transition, mobility, and probably also a ‘new’ economy. The ULLB hopes to work together more with different stakeholders in the future. Because of that the communities of the ULLB will probably be slightly adjusted in the future to make sure they are connected to the above mentioned themes.
Collaboration Workplaces
Next to the communities, the Urban Living Lab Breda also has ‘samenwerkplaatsen’ (literally: collaboration workplaces). The samenwerkplaatsen are active in different neighbourhoods throughout Breda. In these neighbourhoods, the Urban Living Lab Breda tries to see how the residents can actively help to develop the neighbourhood, sometimes connected to a beforementioned community. Themes of projects in a neighbourhood can be very diverse. It can be about urban culture, energy transition, gathering places, sports, the involvement of young people in the community, a digital version of the neighbourhood with information about how the residents see and want things, and more.
The Urban Living Lab Breda finds it is important that residents can have a say in what happens to their neighbourhood, that they can come up with ideas, and can help actively with projects. Also, all projects of the Urban Living Lab Breda and their stakeholders should be able to support and help each other eventually.
What Can I Do?
As a student, you can help with a project, do an internship at the ULLB, or do your graduation assignment there. And if you have an idea yourself on how the city can be improved, the ULLB is more than happy to help you brainstorm about, and maybe develop your idea! If you are interested in helping with a project or reading more about the different activities of the Urban Living Lab Breda, you can check out their site.
A nice project, which the Urban Living Lab Breda is preparing at the moment, is the Dutch Happiness Week. If you are interested in this event, you can read this article. To read more information about the Urban Living Lab Breda, their activities or internships and graduation projects, be sure to visit their site and to take the first step to improve our beautiful Breda!
