Huis van de Toekomst Prototype Testing at the Nieuwe Instituut After-Summer School

The After Summer School presents a Rotterdam-based Curriculum for Change. A wide variety of knowledge producers will teach their methods on how to change the city by looking, listening, writing, archiving, collaborating, activating, researching, designing, and walking differently. We used the occasion to test the first iteration of the digital model with participants of local initiatives taking part in Huis van de Toekomst, neighborhood inhabitants and general public.

Participants worked in smaller groups and were invited to approach the model through their own needs and ideas. People who already take part in Huis van de Toekomst would generally recognize the strategic possibilities for developing and using the model. For people for whom this was the first introduction to Huis van de Toekomst, it was more difficult to understand how the community works, what it needs and what residents and organizations can contribute. They expressed a need for more tangibility.

Among the feedback received, there were two aspects often repeated:

1. The importance of visualizing relationships (interdependencies, connections etc.) among initiatives, participants etc.
2. The model as a tool for demonstrating the added value of community initiatives (as in there is more than the sum of the parts, invisible, qualitative attributes etc.).

Other feedback focused on how the tool can be used internally for communication and resource management by the community and how the model can be used to communicate with external parties. We also received many suggestions on how to improve functional aspects of the prototype.