What is Civímetro?

Civímetro is a guide for evaluation of civic labs.

Civímetro proposes a system that is adaptable to the context of each initiative but based on a methodological framework of reference that allows evaluations from different initiatives to be compared and, as such, to extract knowledge and share what is learned.

It has a seven-step evaluation plan to guide civic innovation initiatives throughout the entire process: from defining objectives and indicators to their measurement and reaching conclusions.



What is civic innovation?

Civic innovation projects look to create innovative ideas and find solutions to complex social challenges based on three differential ingredients with respect to other areas of innovation:

  • The proposed ideas and solutions are experienced within the reality of the local contexts in which they are implemented.
  • These ideas and solutions are promoted and developed primarily by local citizens and the communities.
  • Projects must be developed in a radically open and collaborative way.
  • Their objective is to resolve social challenges and empower citizens.


What is a civic lab?

Civic labs offer a meeting place for citizens where they can experiment and develop civic innovation projects in a shared learning environment.

Spaces where a person or a collective can propose to work on a social challenge specific to their neighbourhood or nearby surroundings, and where their neighbours can join in to develop the project in an open and collaborative way.



Trajectory

Civímetro arose in 2016 in the Civic Design Course promoted by CivicWise, an international network of researchers, freelancers, collectives and small businesses that share tools and methodologies for reflection and collective action in the fields of collective intelligence, civic innovation and open design.

Since then, Civímetro has been developed by different people and in different spaces until becoming what it is today:

2016

Civímetro’s conception as a tool for measuring a wide range of aspects (attributes) in different fields associated with civic spaces.

2016-2017

Practical applications of the tool, adapting it to different subjects and contexts: REC, Fent Estudio (Xest, València); Capgirant Orriols (València); Xarxa Oberta, CARPE (Castelló).

2017

Realisation of the Civímetro tool in measuring only the attributes typical of Civic Design. Development to facilitate implementation of territorial activation policies in the Districte Cultural (L’Hospitalet de Llobregat, Barcelona).

2018

Evolution of the Civímetro concept: from tool to methodology. Exposition of a system applied to spaces, communities and projects during the Ibero-American Labmeeting at Medialab Prado (Madrid).

2018 - 2019

Debate and realisation of the methodology in different meeting spaces such as Civic Design Day (Madrid) and meetings of the local circle of CivicWise Madrid.

2019-2020

Prototyping of Civímetro, resulting in a first version of the guide to evaluate civic labs, consisting in a methodological framework and an evaluation plan specific to this. Phase developed along with Medialab Prado (Madrid) with funding from Designscapes.

2020-2021

Scaled up of our alpha version of Civímetro based in Tabakalera’s Medialab (Donostia / San Sebastián) upto creating a preliminary version of the theory of change, thanks to our selection in the third phase of Designscapes.

 

2021-2022

We will work for 2 years on implementation of Civímetro in Mestura Puerto project (Fuerteventura -Canary Islands-), thus carrying out an end-to-end implementation of our Evaluation Plan and Methodological Framework.

Next challenges

The current version of Civímetro as a guide for the evaluation of civic labs is the result of development reached up to mid-2021.

As challenges for the future, we are considering:

Increasing the autonomy of civic labs when using Civímetro through better templates, interactive tools and documentation.

Developing an ad-hoc software to automatise the analysis of numeric data, specially the one derived from the intersection with Civímetro exercise

Starting a community of civic labs and evaluation practitioners experienced with Civímetro to scale the application of the tool.

Aligning Civímetro with other evaluation standards, such as SGDs.

Adapting Civímetro to civic innovation processes on different scales beyond civic labs.

Collaborate to make it possible

We are looking for experts in any of these topics.

Contact