Deliverable 5.2 - Mid-Term review of Living Labs functioning

Living Labs (LLs) play a key role within DIVINFOOD: for this reason, Work Package 7 on “Coordination and management”, the project’s Grant Agreement envisaged a Task (7.2) specifically aimed at monitoring LL activities. The aim of this deliverable is thus to lay out the LL’s achievements both in terms of the tangible and intangible outputs produced so far (i.e. the what) and the process followed to reach that point (i.e. the how), as the two are inextricably linked. In addition to the tangible and intangible outputs expected from LLs, the project documents gave precise indications as to how LLs were to be organised in order to best achieve the project’s goals. First of all, the LLs are expected to include a diversity of actors along the value chain and cover different roles. Secondly, given that co-learning and co-creation are key approaches of the project, emphasis is placed on the use of participatory approaches. A third feature of the project refers to how to engage stakeholders and above all how to maintain an engagement high during the length of the project, while the last aspect relates to the way LLs grow or recruit new members. This last feature is important because one of the aims of the project is to establish the 9 LLs as laboratories and demonstration sites of how to set up territorial networks that value agrobiodiversity. Based on the above, the key questions in monitoring LLs in the past two years have been: 1. Achievements: What have the LLs achieved or co-produced, in the last two years? 2. Process: How have they done this? Did they involve a diversity of stakeholders and who are they? How were stakeholders engaged and participation stimulated? How are new stakeholders recruited? To answer these questions, the deliverable uses a mix of primary and secondary data. Among the former, we have set an online monitoring tool and carried out informal conversations with LL Coordinators online or physically at Annual Meetings and other gatherings. Secondary data includes the results of the Mid-Term Review and outputs produced by previous Milestones and other events.