Travellab is joint learning processes from facilitated interaction with stakeholders relevant for the objective of the COST Action.
= ‘lab’ because it is about learning
= ‘travellab’ because it is about learning while we travel to visit each other’s realities
The COST Action FACESMAP aims for a strong involvement between participants and local stakeholders throughout the Action lifetime. The main objectives for the Travellab method for interaction with local staksholders are:
- To ensure the research questions and approaches of the Action are relevant for policy and practice;
- To provide opportunities for the Action participants to better understand the different contexts in which the problems studied occur;
- To undertake knowledge exchange between participants and local stakeholders;
To increase to the awareness of policy-makers and local stakeholders about the changes in forest ownership across Europe and its impacts on management. For this purpose, by the end of the Action the following activities will have been undertaken:
- Three European level stakeholder workshops (EU STH WS) (at beginning, middle and end of Action);
- A series of regional level stakeholder interaction activities in combination with the meetings that take place within the development of the Action. These activities comprise:
- Visit to forest holdings and interaction to local stakeholders including forest owners, representatives of public or/and private forest extension services, forest contractors. The Action participants are divided in smaller groups which are composed with representatives from all the 3 working groups (WG) and are in charge of asking relevant questions to the topic of the WG
- Participants meet local stakeholders in 3 different rooms in the meeting venue (e.g. university). Each room will be allocated to a group of homogeneous stakeholders (e.g. private forest owners, public forest owners, forest extension services etc). Working group participants will rotate (in “Carousel”) in the different rooms in order to meet all the group of stakeholders and ask pre-defined questions, relevant for the topic of their working group.
Several participants from each group are allocated the task of ‘note taking’ on content and on the effectiveness of the method for collecting relevant information for the WG topics. Usually there are 2-3 note takers per type of notes required (content and effectiveness of the method) to allow triangulation of data collected. The note takers are in charge of organising the content notes (questions and answers), and the observation notes in a MS Word document. After the Travellab activities they send their individual notes to their WG leader, who compiles them in two separate documents (Content notes, Observation notes) and send both to the Travellab Task Group leader.
FACESMAP has planned seven meetings in different European cities. So far, the meetings and Travellab have been undertaken in:
- Sopron, Hungary (preparatory phase)
- Solsona, Spain
- Helsinki,Finland
- Freiburg, Germany
- Zagreb, Croatia
- Krakow, Poland
- Inverness, Scotland
Analysis of the information collected during the Travellab:
A group of FACESMAP participants (Travellab Task Group) are in charge to organise, analyse and disseminate information collected during the Travellab. There are already preliminary results following-on a workshop to discuss the methods and theories to analyse the information available, and the improvements to be made to the method.
Leader of the Travellab Task-Group is Diana Feliciano (diana.feliciano(at)abdn.ac.uk)
Members of the Travellab Task-Group are: Gerhard Weiss, Anna Lawrence, Teppo Hujala, Zuzana Dobsinska, Alice Ludvig, Lelde Vilkriste, Gun Lidestav, Doni Blagojevic, Ivana Zivojinovic.
Presentation of the Travellab Task-Group form 5th WG meeting in Zagreb (8-10 June 2015):
Diana Feliciano et al. “Travellab – A method for stakeholder interaction in FACESMAP”
Photo from workshop in Vienna to analyse information collected during the Travellab so far (April 2015)