93+ Superhero Schools, Collaboratories, Incubators, Accelerators & Hubs for Social & Tech Innovation

Posted by on Sunday, January 8, 2012 · 36 Comments 

A few weeks back I put my intention out to open a Beacon Collaboratory, or what I called in the blog post a “Superhero School.” As I look around me, I’m seeing a pattern of convergence towards these kinds of live/work/play spaces. As “living labs,” these spaces bring together elements of a tech incubator, an R&D facility, a hackerspace/fablab, a sustainability demonstration site, and it’s all tied to place - with the projects / prototypes / experiments being done there carried out and implemented in the local area, stimulating the economy, creating jobs, and building resilient communities throughout the area and the region.

I’ve been over to the dream property four times now, and each time I go it seems I have a clearer sense of how the whole thing could work.
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I can see it as being an innovation hub and retreat center, wrapped in a creative learning culture. Just 90 minutes by train from NYC, a welcome change of scenery for Silicon Alley.
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As ‘collaboratory’ is defined as a “center without walls,” it could be a second home to a lot of different change agent organizations. For instance, Hub could have a presence there, COMMON could launch some socially conscious enterprises there, Open Source Ecology might build some equipment there, and a hacker collective could run a bootcamp there. There could be programs for teaching kids to code, mentorships with high school students to guide them from idea incubation to entrepreneurship, and events around any number of topics, like arts and culture, technology, business, sustainability, or spirituality.
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At any rate, I wanted to do a bit of a deep dive to find existing examples of these types of things around the world, and was pleasantly surprised to find hundreds.
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Below is the rest of the rabbit hole I fell down all afternoon. Enjoy!

artist incubators / artist-in-residencies

AS220 - (Providence, RI)
STEIM - (Amsterdam, Netherlands)
berlinerpool - Berlin, Germany)
Scotty Enterprises - (Berlin, Germany)
W139 - (Amsterdam, Netherlands)
Smart Project Space - (Amsterdam, Netherlands)
Artist in Residence Centers - (Germany)
Art Laboratory Berlin - (Berlin, Germany)
Eyebeam - (NY, NY)
LabforCulture - (Amsterdam, Netherlands)
The Nomadic Village
Ars Electronica
Kulturlabor Trial & Error - (Berlin, Germany)
Pixelache - (Helsinki, Finland)
European Cultural Foundation - (Amsterdam, Netherlands)
Directorenhaus - (Berlin, Germany)
Platoon - (Berlin, Germany)
DMY - (Berlin, Germany)
Create Berlin - (Berlin, Germany)
Mediamatic - (Amsterdam, Netherlands)
SMARTlab - (Dublin, Ireland)

coworking / project incubation


coworking/registry - US coworking spaces
The Hub - (30 locations globally)
Notman House - (Montreal, Quebec)
Station C - (Montreal, Quebec)
ECTO - (Montreal, Quebec)
La Cantine - (Paris, France)
Echangeur - (Paris, France)
Aalto Design Factory - (Espoo, Finland)
Streetlab - (Amsterdam, Netherlands)
Creative City Lab - (Amsterdam, Netherlands)
Jigsaw Renaissance - (Seattle, WA)
iHub - (Nairobi, Kenya)
Kitchen Budapest - (Budapest, Hungary)
3RD WARD - (Brooklyn, NY)
sektor5 - (Vienna, Austria)
entreprenorskyrkan - (Stockholm, Sweden)
Platform4 - (Aalborg, Denmark)
betahaus - (Berlin, Germany)
Jelly - (global)
Access Space - (Sheffield, UK)

Njambre – (Rosario, Argentina)

entrepreneurship & startup incubators

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KaosPilots - (Arhaus, Denmark)
Knowmads - (Amsterdam, Netherlands)
Team Academy - (Jyväskylä, Finland)
Founder Institute - (global)
blackbox - (San Francisco, CA)
makerlab - (San Francisco, CA)

hackerspace / makerlabs / fab labs / creative spaces


Hackerspaces - global list
foulab - (Montreal, Quebec)
UK Hackspace Foundation - (UK)
IMPULSE FACTORY - (Vienna, Austria)
moddr - (Rotterdam, Netherlands)

innovation camps


Schmiede - (Hallein, Austria)
Incubate - (Tilburg, Netherlands)

living labs / collaboratory


The European Network of Living Labs
West Lexham - (London, UK)
Academie Schloss Solitude - (Stuttgart, Germany)
Ocean University - (at sea)
Kundavi - (Los Cabos, Mexico)
Auroville - (Auroville, India)
Damanhur (Valchiusella, Italy)
Findhorn (Findhorn, Scotland)
Friends of Gaviotas - (Colombia, South America)
Blueseed - (at sea)
Sirius Community - (Shutesbury, Massachusettes)
Bosque Village - (Erongarícuaro, Mexico)
sprout & co. - (Somerville, MA)
Monument (upcoming) – (San Francisco, CA)

social entrepreneurship & resilience education

social innovation organizations & centres

Centre for Social Innovation - (Toronto, Canada)
Social Innovation Exchange - (global)
Francilienne Centre for Innovation - (Paris, France)
Social Innovation Centre - (Paris, France)
Center for Social Innovation - (Vienna, Austria)
The Australian Centre for Social Innovation - (Adelaide, Australia)


further exploring:

—

references:


Piratepad
creativespace PiratePad
Innovation Lab Ecology PiratePad

people who compiled this documentation:


Seb Paquet - @sebpaquet - sebpaquet@gmail.com - Montreal, Canada
José Pietri - jose.pietri@yahoo.com - Paris, France
Nina Kickinger
Barbera Ruder
venessa miemis - @venessamiemis
–
more from the noosphere:
BioCurious – biohacker space - http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204124204577150801888929704.html?mod=wsj_share_tweet_bot

Category: connective intelligence · Tags: , , , , ,

venessa miemis

(256 posts)

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  • http://www.westlexham.org Lucy White

    Happy New Year to you Venessa!

    Wow – thank you for sharing this amazing research, there goes my afternoon!! Thanks also for the mention of West Lexham – an honour to be listed in such awesome company :)

    Can I also propose http://www.giordanobrunouniversity.com and http://www.unltd.org.uk/ and http://thefinancelab.org and http://tastingthefuture.ning.com/ for your list!

    • Venessa Miemis

      thank you lucy for the great links!

  • http://www.everydayrobots.de Dominik

    Thanks for including us Vanessa!
    There´s a lot more to come soon from Berlin, I´ll keep you posted.
    Thanks a lot for your research work and this great resource!

    • Venessa Miemis

      thanks dominik. i was impressed by jay’s piratepad and how much is already going on in berlin!

  • http://labconnections.blogspot.com monika hardy

    whoa. that’s a lot of gold you just dished up..
    huge thanks to all of you. will be referencing..

    • Venessa Miemis

      great, hope it’s useful :)

  • http://steelemaley.net Thomas Steele-Maley

    Fine work here….I respect your focus so much. What concatenation do you see in this research with new learning ecologies for early age….(5yr to 18yr old). Learning communities for the young in public spaces are an ultimate elephant in the room of the P2P/participatory culture/futures thinking movement. As ideology is born upon the shared indoctrination of school, young people should be a concern of all progressive thinkers today….

    I look to the last post and the learning ecology Monika Hardy is a part of as example: http://labconnections.blogspot.com/p/about.html

    Your work is fascinating and powerful Vanessa. Thank you.

    • Venessa Miemis

      i was sitting with my 6 year old niece the other day at the table, and she was telling me how she wanted to self-publish a book online for other kids. she grabbed my iphone and went into the calculator and after a few minutes informed me that if she could sell 125 books at $8, she could buy her own iPad. (she thinks iPads cost $1,000).

      so, these are the kinds of people we are raising these days! if she’s this entrepreneurial at 6, what is she going to be at 12? 20? 30?

      i myself feel like a child learning about new worlds everyday, and to think that young people are being trained in the “old” system really scares me. i am all about action research and experiential learning and inquiry and experimentation. if this Collaboratory thing works, i would want to bring together young people with those who can help them manifest their ideas and learn about the world and each other. even something as simple as an afterschool program where kids learn how to plant & care for & harvest vegetables, or feed animals, or make bread, or fix a bike, or build a chicken coop, or write a mobile app, or print a 3D figurine they designed in the fablab……

      i mean… this is just the stuff that excites *me*…. and now watching my nieces and nephews at ages 3-6, it’s what excites them too. they are still in the fantasy & play phase… this feels like a game for them. and it is, and can continue to be. but serious games, that actually get you paid and teach you thinks that you apply in the real world. it’s just all so exciting.

  • http://steelemaley.net Thomas Steele-Maley

    One more link salient to your topic from the work of Roberto Greco and collaborators… The 2837 University: https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1-br25HbYEBlS8SX0sRBzmq5qlJQAqQz0G8QNEEhzTpo

  • http://twitter.com/kbierce Katharine Bierce (@kbierce)

    THIS IS SO TOTALLY FANTASTIC! Venessa, you rock. I am also a collector and aggregator/sharer of resources (e.g. this doc here https://docs.google.com/document/edit?id=1uSbfCbZg5_tjKWJYNV38SrYdZrlbgrO8R7E866Iw3uA&hl=en)…but this just blew me away.

  • http://webseitz.fluxent.com/wiki Bill Seitz

    Cool list.

    I’m a little dubious about the idea of people schlepping to a “retreat” location – creates sales and scheduling overhead.

    I just use the “Work Community” label from Alexander’s PatternLanguage for this area… http://webseitz.fluxent.com/wiki/WorkCommunity

  • http://twitter.com/jeeshanc Jeeshan Chowdhury (@jeeshanc)

    Thanks for putting this together, its very useful. I’ll be using it on http://www.hackinghealth.ca!

  • http://www.cassierobinson.net Cassie Robinson

    Thanks for this Venessa, it’s really useful.

    I’d add:
    http://www.socialspaces.org/ – especially this strand of what they do – http://sociallab.so/

    Also:
    http://www.youngfoundation.org/
    http://helsinkidesignlab.org/

  • http://twitter.com/tomjd Tom Dawkins (@tomjd)

    What an amazing list, thank you for compiling! A suggested addition: The Vibewire Enterprise Hub (Sydney, Australia) to the co-working/project spaces: http://hub.vibewire.org/

  • http://nadiaelimam.wordpress.com nadiaelimam

    Venessa, thank you for putting together this description and for sharing the resource. I posted about it on Edgeryders :)

  • http://contemplatingme.wordpress.com Praveen

    hi, Are there any such places or Co-op groups in India.
    Thanx for the links….:)

  • davide agazzi

    thanks a lot for sharing this!
    i’d like to add a coworking space in milano (italy) dedicated to sustainability practitioners and social innovators http://www.avanzi.org/english/habitat
    and two incubators for sustainable startups : a) make a cube http://www.makeacube.com/english/ in milan and b) dnamo http://www.dnamo.nl/en/ in rotterdam.
    also the unreasonable institute http://unreasonableinstitute.org/ in colorado is something to look at.
    thanks again
    davide agazzi
    @davideagazzi
    @avanzi_

  • http://gravatar.com/cocreatr cocreatr

    Well, thank you. Had this post cooking and glad it was not ready, adding your list helps me make a point.

    The Next Edge – everyone is a beginner new post (i) inspired by @jhagel @venessamiemis @technoshaman #occupy @suzieis

  • http://chrysalisuganda.wordpress.com Chrysalis School for Young Social Entrepreneurs

    Amazing to see there are so many “Superhero” schools. Our Centre is in Uganda and is a hub for teenage social entrepreneur development. Our Centre blog is at http://chrysalisuganda.wordpress.com – we’re small but we’re relevant and high impact.

    @socentafrica

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  • http://twitter.com/tonyfish Tony Fish (@tonyfish)

    Vanessa – can you add my incubator in London? http://www.theIW.org – thank you Tony

  • Joakim Larsson

    How can Hyper Island not be on this list!

  • http://Sidekickschool.net Adil

    Great list. Can I add our incubator for charities – to help them develop revenue generating digital products. Sidekick School (sidekickschool.net).

  • http://www.pleasetakeonestep.com Natasha Rawdon-Jones

    Funny you should mention Super Heroes… Here is a little video we have recently made to inspire #generosity. We asked people to tell us “If I was a SuperHero I would…” and there were some interesting answers….

    Here’s the video:

  • http://gravatar.com/nicmep nicmepnic

    Fantastic. Thank you! :-)

  • http://www.vitis-tct.be riabaeck2

    Venessa, you could also add Kufunda Learning Village in Zimbabwe, near Harare to your list. There are more that fit in the category Living Labs, check the Berkana Exchange for more.

  • http://iamkatiebrennan.wordpress.com iamkatiebrennan

    Venessa, saw your mega list briefly in January and coming back to it again now. Huge thanks for putting this together!

  • http://www.slideshare.net/TA_LearningExpedition/tiimiakatemias-learning-expedition-in-a-nutshell Vili Nieminen

    Hey this a rather facinating list!

    I’d like to welcome all of you like-minded people to visit Team Academy -
    http://www.tiimiakatemia.fi/en/learning-expedition/
    http://www.slideshare.net/TA_LearningExpedition/tiimiakatemias-learning-expedition-in-a-nutshell

    • Dhruv Dayal

      Hi Vili,

      I recently worked with a group collaborating with Team Akademi, from Mondragon University, Spain. Great brainstorming workshop on Social Innovation.

  • davide agazzi

    here you can also find some useful case studies
    http://www.marsdd.com/2012/02/29/labs-designing-future

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  • http://gravatar.com/ftlfoundation ftlfoundation

    looks like you forgot to include TechShop (http://TechShop.com). It is THE do-it-youself/incubator/how-to learning facility. They have three in the SF Bay Area; the original one is in Menlo Park, near Stanford University. They have one in Detroit, one in Raleigh-Durham, and they are building them in Austin TX, Phoenix, NYNY, Wash DC, and Pittsburg PA. It costs me about $100/month to be a Member

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