De Andere Markt: transferring imaginations of work

Abstract

What are your capabilities? How do you imagine a workstation where you can apply these capabilities? Where is it situated? These are some of the questions addressed by De Andere Markt (DAM), a Living Lab in the city of Genk. Via the Participatory Design (PD) of semi-fictional 'workstations', we research and design the future of work together with local citizens, public and private organisations and our international network of researchers. The findings, methods, tools and artefacts are made public and open source. This allows to transfer them to other projects, locations and times, as a means of supporting a broader, sustainable and informed debate on 'work'. In an age of participation, many local initiatives have developed their own situated approaches to deal with issues. Our exhibition and workshop wants to constructively contribute to the debate on the values and ways of transferring these types of local initiatives to different groups in the city and other projects in different contexts, locations and times.