The Swedish Living Lab held its fourth meeting February 6th at our participant Elin Skörde’s home and forest farm. The Lab’s co-leads Siv Lindén, Hela Sverige ska leva, and Dr Katarina Pettersson, SLU, introduced the meeting, and thanked Elin for having us. Then Dr Flora Hajdu, SLU, who is also part of the SLU GRASS Ceiling-team presented research on Sweden’s changing agriculture, that she has been part of doing Please find more information here (in Swedish). The research found that farmers use various strategies and resources, and make use of welfare systems. During the presentation the participating women were asked to reflect and discuss the findings – to see if they, for example, use a ‘maximization strategy’, an ‘optimization strategy’, or perhaps a ‘diversification strategy’.
The participants also discussed issues of social sustainability and social welfare systems, including parental leave and pensions, and how they have or may potentially use them in the future. In the afternoon Science Park Jönköping’s Emilia Sundberg joined us and introduced us to this stakeholder’s activities and offers to entrepreneurs and innovators. She also led the participants in an exercise to think creatively around new ideas when looking at two photos – one of a drone and one of a cheese. Different interesting and somewhat ‘crazy’ ideas came up – the point being nothing is too crazy and you should not filter away any ideas when being creative. We concluded the meeting with a discussion among the participants on what they want to do in the future Living lab workshops. The fifth Living lab workshop is planned to take place April 29th, 2024.
