Throughout December 2018 and January 2019, kick-off workshops took place at SISCODE co-creation labs around Europe, as part of the ideation phase of the co-creation labs journey, during which each lab designs its co-creation challenge, based on the Responsible Research & Innovation and Science Technology & Innovation principles of SISCODE project.

In mid-December 2018 (17-18/12), a representation of POLIMI (Politecnico Milano) partners visited the Thessaloniki Active & Healthy Ageing Living Lab (Thess-AHALL), part of the Medical Physics Lab of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, for a two-day workshop on the ideation of Thess-AHALL’s Challenge, entitled “Participate 4…Campaigns”.

In the first day of the workshop, the POLIMI partners had an in-depth presentation of the facilities and activities of Thess-AHALL, which is active in the fields of health & well-being, focusing on exploring shifting paradigms in elderly healthcare, as well as care for developmental disorders and the different innovations and breakthroughs brought about by information communication technologies (ICT), mobile technologies and web technologies, in general. As an adherent member of the European Network of Living Labs (ENoLL), Thess-AHALL embraces co-creation approaches in its research activities, by having built a strong network of stakeholders in the healthcare domain. In this framework, Thess-AHALL presented its previous experience in co-design and co-creation methodology to POLIMI partners and provided a first draft of the “Participate 4…Campaigns” Challenge.

The second day was devoted to define the objectives and the activities of the challenge, also mapping all the actors and stakeholders involved, from citizens to policy makers. The “Participate 4…Campaigns” aim to fight social isolation and the cultural stigma in the ageing population and chronic patients, using open science and social research as its means to welcome these groups of people back to the society.

The workshop in Thessaloniki was very helpful for the Thess-AHALL team, so as to determine its challenge, more specifically, and set its main goals and actors for each phase of its journey. Moreover, the fully exploitation of the SISCODE toolbox proved very important for the continuation of the co-creation journey, while the workshop offered the opportunity to the Living Lab team members to generate some new ideas and aspects of the challenge, which they hadn’t considered before.