Uhina.lab connects a big campus with U theory through innovative learning, action research and university extension
We are a multilingual hub (Basque/Spanish/English/German/Portuguese) based in Donostia – San Sebastian, trying to connect a big public university with awareness based global changes in higher education. We began a year ago, as a community of practice devoted to creating an u.lab based experience in the University of the Basque Country, Gipuzkoa campus — becoming waves of change towards lifelong, sustainable and meaningful learning, research and outreach initiatives.
COVID19 has acted a as catalyst of many changes that were emerging in universities all over the world. Digitalization is one of them, another how to democratize access to higher education. At Uhina.lab we use Theory U to activate our local communities (both in the Gipuzkoa Campus and in Tabakalera, an International Center for Contemporary Culture) to align or steer those changes towards a conscious and sustainable future. Our core team is a mixed crowd: 2 academics, 2 activists and 2 coaches. We have completed the 1x and 2x journeys and taken part in the Global Forum, both online and face-to-face.
In the meetings that took place on July 10 and 11, a number of projects were presented, all of them having to do with different communities of practice. They appear in these two animations:
Our main three projects include taking part in a new master degree at our Business School (“Aldatuz”), helping students to acquire democratic culture through action-research (“Jauzi Handia”), and developing awareness-based tools in Basque so that the minority language becomes an agent for positive change (“Aktibatu”).
As one participant in the Global Forum remarked, “I am a strong advocate for increasing the usage of minority languages in urbane situations, including higher education. I believe that people of all linguistic backgrounds should be able to participate in a fulfilling higher education experience, that speakers of minority languages can offer insightful perspectives that are often overlooked by dominant cultures, and that global problems affect minority language communities so that speakers of minority languages should participate in the process of developing solutions.”
