Beyond the Lab Coat: How Living Labs and Co-creation Are Reshaping Soil Science

Soil health is one of the most pressing environmental challenges of our time, yet much of the most valuable knowledge about it exists beyond academic journals. This knowledge lives in the hands and minds of farmers, advisors, rural communities, and policymakers who work the land every day. The LivingSoiLL project is built on this conviction, and an ambitious methodology to act on it was adopted: the Living Lab.

But what exactly is a Living Lab? And what does “co-creation” really mean in practice? To find out, we spoke to two researchers at the heart of the project: Eleonora Bonifacio, from the University of Turin (Italy), and Lívia Madureira, from the University of Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro (Portugal).

Opening the Doors: What Makes a Living Lab Different

Traditional research often follows a familiar pattern: scientists define the problem, design the study, collect data in controlled conditions, and then, sometimes years later, share the results with practitioners. By then, the gap between the laboratory and the field can feel insurmountable.

Living Labs work differently. “Traditional innovation often happens behind closed doors,” explains Lívia Madureira. “Living Labs open them.” Rather than studying soil health from a distance, they create shared spaces where farmers, researchers, businesses, citizens and policymakers work together on real-world challenges, testing solutions in the communities and everyday environments where they will play out.

The shift is both procedural and philosophical. “The result isn’t just more inclusive, it’s more effective,” Madureira says, “because ideas are shaped by lived experience, not assumptions.”

This quality makes Living Labs especially well-suited to challenges like soil health, where complexity is the rule, not the exception. Soils vary enormously across regions, climates, and farming systems. Threats to soil health such as compaction, erosion, loss of organic matter, and contamination interact with one another and with human practices in ways that no single discipline can fully capture. “Living Labs work because they mirror complexity instead of simplifying it away,” Madureira observes. “They bring together different forms of knowledge and test solutions in real-world conditions, allowing challenges like soil health to be addressed more holistically.”

Crucially, they also bridge what Madureira calls “cognitive gaps”: the divides between science, policy, and practice that so often prevent good research from translating into meaningful change.

Who Is in the Room? The Actors of a Living Lab

A Living Lab is only as strong as the diversity of perspectives it brings together. In LivingSoiLL, this means farmers and land managers, advisors and extension services, researchers, industry actors, policymakers, and rural communities. Each of them contributes something irreplaceable.

Farmers bring what no textbook can fully replicate: experience-based knowledge of soils, crops, terrain, and climate, and of how these interact in often unpredictable ways in everyday decision-making. They are also central to testing and adapting solutions under real farming conditions. Advisors translate knowledge into actionable practices. Researchers contribute scientific evidence and structure learning. Industry actors develop and adapt tools and technologies. Policymakers connect local insights to broader frameworks. And rural communities provide context, values, and long-term stewardship perspectives.

“What makes the difference is how these actors work together,” says Madureira. Living Labs “reduce the distance between science, policy, and practice, converting compartmentalised knowledge into shared solutions that are tested on the ground.”

Eleonora Bonifacio points to a shift she has observed first-hand among participants in the North-Western Italy – Piemonte Living Lab. “In many cases, the perception has changed from the beginning of the project. They are more aware, and I think this is thanks to the involvement since the beginning,” she says. “This project is research done together with other stakeholders, not done for them.”

Co-creation: More Than Just Consultation

Co-creation is a word that risks becoming a buzzword, used broadly and stripped of meaning. In the context of Living Labs, however, co-creation has a precise and demanding definition.

“Co-creation in Living Labs is a collaborative process where different actors jointly design, test, and refine solutions in real-world conditions,” explains Madureira. The key distinction is timing and depth of involvement. Instead of solutions being developed by one group and handed to others for implementation, co-creation brings farmers, advisors, researchers, industry, and policymakers in from the very beginning. “Knowledge is not only shared: it is built together through interaction and experimentation.”

In practice, this means engagement is continuous, iterative, and embedded in the process itself. Stakeholders first collaborate in framing the problem together, follow by the co-design of solutions, test them under real conditions, and reflect on results as a group. “Knowledge flows in multiple directions,” Madureira notes, “and solutions evolve as they are confronted with real-world conditions.”

The toolkit that supports this process is varied. In LivingSoiLL, co-creation draws on workshops and field visits for joint problem framing, on-farm trials, and structured participatory techniques such as stakeholder empathy mapping, visual problem framing tools, idea cards, and stakeholder journey mapping. Facilitation plays a central role, and not only in the formal sense. “Informal spaces for observation and conversation” are just as important as structured sessions, Madureira explains, because they help build the trust and shared understanding that formal processes alone cannot generate.

Facilitators act as neutral intermediaries, supporting dialogue, connection, and continuity across the network of actors. They also ensure that monitoring and reflection are embedded throughout, using field data and farmer feedback to fuel collective learning.

What LivingSoiLL’s Living Labs Look Like on the Ground

Inside LivingSoiLL, the Living Labs are running a range of interconnected activities. As Eleonora Bonifacio describes, one foundational stream is knowledge-building about soil health. “Farmers know well the importance of soil for supporting crops, but they are not always aware of what a healthy soil is and which are the main threats to soil health,” she explains. These activities are taking place across all LivingSoiLL Living Labs, tailored to local needs identified through earlier focus groups.

The second and central strand involves the actual implementation of potential solutions to improve soil health. This brings farmers, advisors, and technicians into close collaboration around a shared objective. Monitoring of results is now beginning in areas where sufficient time has elapsed since applying the solutions.

The learning outcomes are tangible. “The LL structure allows participants to learn from each other,” Bonifacio notes. “All skills are useful.” Beyond technical knowledge, what emerges is a broader awareness: of what healthy soil looks like, of the threats soil faces, and of the connection between soil management and crop production. In Bonifacio’s words, the overarching goal is to “make people understand that crop production needs healthy soils.”

Not Without Its Challenges

Neither Bonifacio nor Madureira romanticises the Living Lab approach: co-creation, done well, is genuinely hard.

One structural tension is temporal, the costs of co-creation, including time, coordination effort, and uncertainty, are short-term, while the benefits emerge over longer time horizons. Another challenge stems from the diversity of actors involved. “Farmers, researchers, industry, and policymakers operate with different timeframes, incentives, and perspectives,” says Madureira, “which can reinforce cognitive distance if not actively addressed.”

There is also the challenge of maintaining sustained engagement in an iterative, experimental process within systems “often oriented towards linear planning and quick, measurable results.” Addressing these tensions requires good facilitation, governance and business models that support long-term collective value creation. This means ensuring fair participation, shared ownership of results, and incentives that make collaboration viable over time.

For those considering the approach, Bonifacio offers a candid word of encouragement: “I have a very positive opinion, although I think that it’s not easy to start. Therefore my advice would be not to give up when difficulties emerge at the beginning, because things become easier once a common language has been established.” Madureira echoes the spirit: “Ultimately, Living Labs are less about applying a method and more about building a process of continuous interaction, adaptation, and co-ownership of outcomes.”

Looking Ahead: Living Labs at the Heart of European Soil Policy

Both researchers are optimistic about the future role of Living Labs in European soil science and policy. For Madureira, they are positioned to serve as interfaces between science, practice, and policy, “supporting the development and testing of long-term solutions with local stakeholders.” By linking local knowledge, scientific evidence, and policy frameworks, Living Labs can help ensure that soil health strategies are both effective and durable. They also reinforce the role of local communities in delivering the soil health mission over time.

Bonifacio sees Living Labs as uniquely powerful for knowledge transfer, but is careful to note their limits. “Because of the involvement of many different actors and of the co-creation process, they are for sure more effective than a top-down approach. On the other hand, they must be only a part of the research activities.” Real-world conditions make it difficult to isolate variables, some forms of mechanistic scientific understanding still require controlled experimentation.

In this sense, Living Labs are not a replacement for traditional research. They are its necessary companion. Living Labs are the bridge that ensures what is discovered in the laboratory finds its way into the field, shaped and owned by the people who will live with the results.

Eleonora Bonifacio is a soil scientist at the University of Turin (UNITO) (Italy) and a Living Lab coordinator within the LivingSoiLL project. Lívia Madureira is a researcher at the University of Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro (UTAD) (Portugal) and a specialist in rural innovation and participatory processes.