From 2026 to 2031, the Athena Institute at VU Amsterdam coordinates the BEAT Living Lab. Through this Living Lab, diverse stakeholders are connected to build a shared understanding and co-design solutions to everyday mobility barriers, including IUMBs, across interventions, urban design, and policy.
The BEAT Living Lab aims to build a collaborative partnership with people affected by informal mobility barriers, among them disabled people with diverse physical and cognitive experiences (PaCDs). By working closely with those who face these barriers in everyday life, the Living Lab supports the BEAT project’s goal of developing a holistic and people‑centred understanding of informal mobility barriers and their impacts.
To achieve this objective, the BEAT project adopts a Living Lab approach. This participatory methodology creates a reflexive, inclusive, and safe space where practitioners, researchers, and community members engage with pressing challenges together.The BEAT project brings together citizens with lived experiences, among them disabled people with diverse physical and cognitive experiences (PaCDs), who work alongside municipalities and policymakers, SMEs, local organisations, and researchers.
A hub for knowledge co‑creation
The Athena Institute enables the development of the BEAT Living Lab by creating the conditions for people, knowledge, and practice to come together as a hub for knowledge co‑production. The BEAT research team builds on this foundation, drawing on the Athena Institute’s knowledge and resources to integrate societal perspectives, address societal challenges, and engage diverse actors through transdisciplinary collaboration.
Through the Living Lab, these principles are translated into a shared research platform that connects and supports the three BEAT research lines:
- Co‑designing enabling interventions based on accessibility models
- Built Environment
- Policy and Practice
By bringing these research lines together, the Living Lab enables collaboration, learning, and exchange, with particular attention to understanding and addressing informal urban mobility barriers (IUMBs).
Key activities include:
- Connecting communities, knowledge, and innovation
- Enabling co‑creation and co‑design with stakeholders
- Sustaining collaboration around pressing accessibility challenges
From knowledge to action
Through the BEAT Living Lab, community driven and participatory research methods, such as Living Lab activities, transect walks, focus groups, and observations are used to deepen understanding of informal urban mobility barriers (IUMBs) and how they affect the everyday lives of disabled people, engaging with a wide range of physical and cognitive experiences (PaCDs). This work supports collaboration, co-creation, and sustained connections throughout the project and beyond.
This includes:
- Documentation of inclusive Living Lab research practices, including methods and lessons learned in addressing IUMBs
- Knowledge resources and dissemination materials supporting learning across research, policy, and practice
- Co‑creation processes and practical interventions responding to everyday mobility barriers and IUMBs
- Sustained societal partnerships developed through long‑term collaboration within BEAT
- Capacity‑strengthening resources to support the continuity of Living Lab activities beyond the project timeline
- Informing our general audience about the project
- Advocating for and spreading the word about how this projects' transdisciplinary/cocreation/participatory research addresses complex societal problems
- Inviting the audience to take part in the debate/research to close the gap between science and society. (if applicable)
- Expressing opinions: we believe that science is not objective, so we can express personal visions of our researchers to some extent
*The illustration featured on this webpage was designed by artist Beyza Durmuş.
