Last UIA TAST'in FIVES Journal: Urban labs as a new way of creating and living the city

The Cooking workshops organised by Les Sens du Goût, and La Sauvegarde du Nord have resumed, after the lockdowns (from October 2020 to April 2021). Amongst others, they completed the activities organised over European Heritage Days week-end on 18 and 19 September 2021, around the “Guinguettes Made in Fives” for the general public[1]. Participants returned with the same interest as before, with an average of 10 participants each time. The atmosphere has remained cheerful and playful, despite the sanitary measures – fully respected by all.

The activities in the Common kitchen continue under the previous format, facilitated by le Sens du Goût together with the coordination of the CCAS. The workshops finally moved to their final destination, Chaud Bouillon!, on 4th October 2021, and a new dynamic has emerged. Not only have the workshops not lost participants in the move, but on the contrary, they have been many demands from new partners. As Margaux HELFER from the CCAS explains, they have had to get adjusted to the new demands: “We will have to learn to manage all the incoming demands, our agendas are already full! We used to work with our direct partners, now, organisations from outside the UIA project come and ask for a timeslot. We will create synergies amongst each other to make the most out of the available planning”.

[1] These week-ends also benefitted from activities from other local NGOs :  Korzeam, providing initiation to African music and danse; Don Man shop and l'Artotheque L'inventaire, on plastic arts; Bicloubook, reading of books; all these with local public support, from Politique de la Ville fund.

The support to entrepreneurs has been extended and 12 entrepreneurs are now being incubated (out of 27 applicants). Before the opening of the Professional kitchen, activities took place in a Tiers-lieu called Bazaar St-So, for a total of 300 hours of support. Now, the professional kitchen has been fully operational since 30 August 2021. A visit was organised on 15 September 2021, and cooking on site launched at the same time. Before the Food Court opens (see below), the entrepreneurs have the chance to test their products in other places.

The training for professionals has moved forward. The caterer has now been selected and started working on 21 September 2021. The pandemics restricted the willingness of caterers to apply for this position, yet, Baluchon managed to recruit a motivated professional wishing to move into training. Clients for the caterer will be identified and provided by Baluchon: there is already a long waiting list as the pool of sustainable and local caterers able to produce large quantities is very limited in Lille.

The Urban Farm is maybe the biggest success of the project in its last year. Indeed, while it was composed of two main types of activities during the prototyping phase - urban agriculture experimentation and awareness-raising/education with the general public - the form it would take, both physically and in terms of governance was yet to be defined a year ago.

In terms of the experimentations carried out by Junia, the engineering school, the major challenge remained to ensure that the correct infrastructure would be built, while being dependent on a complex public procurement, with limited market offers. Visiting the farm in September 2021 was an unexpected surprise with two functional and well-adjusted greenhouses. Indeed, these greenhouses are host to aeroponics and hydroponics experimentations to also supply food for the upcoming Food Court, fed by an aquaponics system, heated by a mushroom growth.

The awareness-raising activities of Lilotopia – the name given to the UIA offspring of educational NGO on urban agriculture – are multiple, covering seedings, testing (larva growth, endive growth), spirulina farm, and raised beds. The most impressive work has been that based on governance and business model development. Indeed, Lilotopia was seeking a collaborative governance model involving local residents, NGOs and Chaud Bouillon!’s partners. An online co-creation workshop was organised 16 December 2021, to support this process, which led to the set-up of an NGO. Closely related to this, the business model was eventually decided to be based on own revenues from activities with local organisations and housing providers, as well as public subsidies.

The collaboration between Junia and Lilotopia currently takes the form of a partnership for Lilotopia to sub rent the space and jointly communicate. Links are on-going with the Common and Professional Kitchens. One of the next ambitions is to get greater involvement with the neighbourhood, its local inhabitants, NGOs, and social housing companies.

The different elements of the infrastructure of Chaud Bouillon! are now almost all finalised: the building is ready to welcome all activities, the Common Kitchen and the Professional Kitchen are fully operational as is the urban farm. These will be centered around the Food Court. Yet, even though the infrastructure and the business model are all prepared and funding secured, the exact format under which the Food Court can open by the chosen company, Petite Lune, is still not entirely defined.

“Petite Lune was meant to start its activities first, it will eventually start last”, explains Audrey LINKENHELD. Indeed, Petite Lune had to overcome a few technical issues: a few misunderstandings about electricity provision and accounting delayed the process but were finally solved; the original renting contract had to be extended after the pandemics impact (and delays) to ensure that Petite Lune would get return on investments; the team was informed late about a potentially competing project opening in front, with a local brewery and bar. All these were overcome.

The last element to overcome was the change of space allocated to its outdoor activities, reduced by 400 m²: in fact, contrary to its commercial proposal, the rights to use the public domain were brought under the same commercial conditions as any another company on the site, thus restricting the deployment of the activity to part of the exterior spaces to avoid conflicts of use (residential vs. commercial activities).. Even if Petite Lune felt destabilized by the reduction of its possible activities, it decided to stay in the project and readjust its economic model. Discussions are now underway between Petite Lune and the lessor (ANCT) to ensure commitments in line with Petite Lune's ethical approach (guaranteeing correct salaries, supporting professional reintegration, organizing cultural activities, working with alternative food systems ( etc.) and the social impact objectives of the TAST'in FIVES project.

“How did you end up taking part in this cooking class today?” At the cloture of L’Avant-Goût, Josianne and Gilberte explained they were part of an NGO of elderly people in the neighbourhood and received the invitation this way. Pierre and Mehdi, both students in political sciences, saw the information on the Heritage Day website.

Later on, when the Guinguettes started their activities - children make-up, wooden games, salsa initiation, clothing panting – queues of interested participants waiting for their turn started to form, tables and benches became invaded for chilling. We could observe a wide range of people: families, single people, children of different ages – playing all over the place, elderly, young people, women wearing light summer tops as well as scarfed women, …

The partners happily observed that the activities over the 3 week-ends have been more familial, more local, more open to the neighbourhood, more accepted by the neighbours and less profit-oriented than than the summer ephemerous street food market, “La Friche Gourmande” (see the 2nd Journal and the article on Testing a future Food Court by prototyping it in real-life), ensuring real anchorage in the neighbourhood.

The Municipality has been key in supporting the design and implementation of the UIA TAST’in FIVES project: “Yann Thoreau La Salle, Antoine Plane and Cécilie Dagmey, our project coordinators, have throughout the project been our anchors and drivers. We would never have been here today without them, personally and professionally” praises Margaux HELFER from CCAS. In the previous journal though, we were stressing the big challenge of letting go this coordination from the City. At the same time, we also stressed that the governance model of TAST’in FIVES has been at the heart of its innovation.

The Municipality still keeps on playing a key role in facilitating some of the remaining key elements of implementation of the project, notably related to Chaud Bouillon! and communication. However, after the initial strong involvement of the city in the prefiguration of the project, the partners are now fully independent in coordinating their actions amongst themselves.

The governance model has taken new ambitions in light of the development of Chaud Bouillon!. Indeed, since September 2020, partners have created working groups to further co-create the way they would manage the site. After a couple of months, it was decided to stop the working groups as institutionalised, to actually experiment this governance on the stop and identify working topics depending on arising issues and situations.

Yet, interactions have continued: every week or 2, all the partners involved in Chaud Bouillon! have met and updated each other about their developments.

The most surprising is to see the involvement and dedication of Petite Lune, the private partner which joined the project towards its end to be the coordinator of the Food Court: as a private partner seeking to get a return on financial and human investment, one could have expected for them to be less involved, engaged, in co-creation and participatory processes, for which they do not get immediate benefit. All the partners see them as one of them. Sarah QUELARD from Petite Lune explains “the project will work only if we work on this all together. We need to make our individual activities visible to one another to make them visible to the general public. The way we have worked and each one of us has actually enabled creating a confident space of work that is very rare to find elsewhere”.

Communicating about the different features of TAST’in FIVES has been a complex process during the lifetime of the project (see previous Journal): different partners, different entities, separate communication plans, with diverse outreach impacts. “Making such different activities live under a single brand is a bit tricky” shares Margaux HELFER from CCAS. Yet, now at the end of the project, the Chaud Bouillon! trademark is finalised, with a declinaison for all the partners and their activities. The overall contractual framework for each partner to use will soon be ready to be signed through individual commitments.

At the same time, communication has increased and improved in the last year. Social media, especially Facebook, has provided strong visibility to the summer activities. The move and opening of the Common kitchen have also been relayed via the City of Lille’s website and on Facebook, attracting a lot of interest to this new infrastructure (see above).

A few main issues remain: improving signposting on the site, further integrating Lilotopia and Junia in the overall Chaud Bouillon! communication and identifying the actual leader of the communication strategy. Now that the activities have been moved to their final destination, these will be more concretely on the agenda of the partners.

Political vision and leadership are key for launching and implementing a project such as that of TAST’in FIVES. Hadn’t it been for the political support, this project would have not been possible. In addition, the coordination has been key to ensure a smooth implementation leading to full independence.

The crucial role of the coordinator within the Municipality was already stressed in the previous journal. this position ensures not only coordinating the different partners but also liaising with the other City departments and wider City projects.

In the case of this project, another key tool has ensured the integration within urban policies and future follow-up of Chaud Bouillon!: that is the Steering Committee of the wider Fives Cail renovation project, which will be on-going as long as the renovation will continue.

The Municipality will also keep a special eye on the coordination of Chaud Bouillon! not only as its offspring, but also to ensure the adequacy within Fives Cail. It will also be present as remaining the owner the trademark.

"Discussions and exchanges with Petite Lune about the Food Court have been complex: we have had to start the discussion over and over again. Indeed, the building was built before they were granted the right to develop their economic activities on the site!” shares Stéphane Goube from Soreli. The previous journal also stressed the limitations for CCAS and Les Sens du Goût to design the Common Kitchen they wanted to be as friendly and welcoming as possible.

Indeed, the renovation procedures were bound to Public Procurement rules on the one hand and very strict technical and fire safety regulations on the other, which limited, to a certain extent, the room for manoeuvre of the partners in creating and furbishing the space, and led to some lack of understanding of the final design (of the rooms, windows etc.).

Yet, some solutions were identified: the Common Kitchen is colourful and enjoyable, the Professional kitchen, highly equipped with a nicely designed  “move forward” approach (always moving forward in the cooking process, never backwards, to prevent contamination of products), the space for the Food Court ready with adequate electricity access The results are very satisfactory.

“We have been unable to design a proper monitoring strategy of our activities so far. Now we want to re-open this work field” declares Margaux HELFER from CCAS. Indeed, as presented in the previous journal, evaluation has been limited in the previous phases of the project, and were restricted to : the number of attendees to activities:, a sociological analysis of the neighborhood was carried out as well as a short qualitative analysis of the profile and interest of participants of the activities of L’Avant-Goût. The partners would now like to identify the profiles and interests of the participants, also enabling shifting their strategies if need is. Such a monitoring is also key to justify funding and to talk more concretely about the achievements of the different structures of the project, notably the Common Kitchen.  There in particular, it is envisaged to use some flexible online survey tools, via tablets.