Living Lab Lindenholt: the natural breeding ground for the neighbourhood

In the Netherlands, a large group of people are in a vulnerable position due to an accumulation of related problems, such as poverty, unemployment and various health problems. The living environment in neighbourhoods plays an important role in these problems. For example, we see that neighbourhoods where more people live in a vulnerable position are often less attractive in terms of (public) green space. This negatively affects people's health.

It is increasingly recognized that green and other citizen initiatives are important for strengthening the healthy living environment. They reach and involve residents who are often hard to reach by mainstream institutions and municipalities and create a community in which residents actively contribute. What is special: they are rooted in the neighbourhood, they are low-threshold, they work integrally and they connect to the needs of (vulnerable) residents. Citizen initiatives can also easily make a bridge between the physical and social domain. A good example is the Broederij. The Broederij is a citizen initiative in the middle of the low SES neighbourhood Lindenholt in Nijmegen: a creative breeding ground and lively meeting place where creativity, play and nature experience are central. In 2021, the Broederij started the ‘Tuinbrigade’ in which volunteers from the neighbourhood manage neighbourhood greenery and gardens of fellow residents. The ‘Tuinbrigade’ is an example of intersectoral collaboration between researchers, a green citizen initiative, housing corporations, community work, healthcare and the municipality of Nijmegen to realize a healthy living environment for citizens in vulnerable situations. Others can learn a lot from this.

Currently, however, the role of citizens initiatives is insufficiently structurally embedded in policy, which is partly due to a lack of vision and recognition of the informal role of initiatives by the municipality. Therefore, this project aims, by means of a learning living lab, to develop a sustainable model for green and social citizen initiatives in Nijmegen, in which cross-domain collaboration on a healthy living environment is central. Lessons learned concerning a good division of roles between informal and formal partners, concerning effective elements in the collaboration and concerning sustainable collaboration are unravelled.

This living lab project will last 8 months – from April 2023 to January 2024. Activities are:

• Mapping the experiences of collaboration within the ‘Tuinbrigade’: what works, what does the collaboration bring and what is the value of the citizen initiative the Broederij in this. Here, we will conduct interviews internally at the Broederij and externally with collaboration partners.
• Describing a sustainable model of collaboration by drawing lessons from success factors, recommendations and division of roles between partners.
• Developing training materials for social (green) entrepreneurs and other parties to establish a similar model of collaboration in other neighbourhoods. This way, lessons learned will be made transferable.
• Organising four interactive meetings in Nijmegen, in which we will share results and learn collaboratively with the project group and with other parties.
• Learning collaboratively and sharing knowledge in the learning network ‘Living Labs Collaborating on a Healthy Living Environment’.