KL: partners and clients

In 2018, the Ministry of Justice and Security started the pilot IPTA: Integral Person-Oriented Guidance to Employment, aimed at preventing perpetrators of crime among ‘young people’ (16-27 years) in a vulnerable position with multiple problems. IPTA runs in seven municipalities and 175 young people have entered. Kennisland, in collaboration with Ecorys, is investigating the impact of the IPTA approach, focusing mainly on the perspective of young people.

Together with the University of Amsterdam, we investigated how the call for innovation could be translated into a sustainable system change. Who is involved? What are the obstacles and how can innovation processes be stimulated? The most important question is in fact: how do we design the university of the future?

Together with knowledge institutions, citizens and social organisations we are always looking for new ways of producing knowledge in order to create more social impact.

KL is organising ‘testing grounds’ in the province of Zeeland and the east of the Netherlands to investigate, together with those involved, why Muslim discrimination is hardly reported. In addition, we design solutions that increase the willingness to report Muslim discrimination. We previously examined the strengths and weaknesses of fraud prevention intervention teams.

Inspired by our education programs, Education Pioneers and Daredevils (Waaghalzen), we work together with LOWAN to improve newcomer education. We organise ‘learning meetings’ so that teachers can exchange knowledge and experience with each other and research together how they can provide better education for this specific group.

Since 2013 KL, among others, has been organising the European Social Innovation Competition, an initiative of DG Growth of the European Commission.

The Commission also financed Apps for Europe, a thematic network that organises open data competitions. Besides that, KL was a partner in the EU-funded SEED (Social Entrepreneur Exchange and Development) and in Bridge-IT, a network that focused on information and communication technologies for migrants and ethnic minorities in Europe.

In 2007, KL was one of the founders of the EU-funded COMMUNIA Network that researches the future of the public domain in this digital age. In 2011, COMMUNIA continued its work as an association.

Open State Foundation is committed to disclosing more government information such as open data. It focuses on data on government finances, education, culture and care.

Open State was one of our partners in Open Culture Data, a network of cultural professionals, software developers, designers, copyright specialists and open data experts, that opens data from the cultural heritage sector and encourages the development of valuable cultural applications. This makes culture accessible in new ways to a broader public.

For the municipality of Nijmegen, we have developed jongLAB, a temporary on-site collaboration between policymakers, municipal officials, professionals and citizens to work on social innovation and improvement. The social lab in Nijmegen focused on the research questions: “What is it like to be young in Nijmegen, and how can we make that better?” 

Besides this, Nijmegen is one of the participants in the project City Deal Kennis Maken (City Deal Making Knowledge), in which ten Dutch cities work on accelerating and strengthening a sustainable cooperation between city and knowledge institutions.

KWR generates knowledge to enable the water sector to operate water-wisely in our urbanised environment.

More and more people want to go ‘off the grid’. They aim for a decentralised, sustainable and independent supply of necessities such as water and energy. How do water authorities relate to this changing social reality? KL investigated how water management can develop in a changing society.

The Wikimedia Foundation is an international organisation that provides the essential infrastructure for free knowledge. The organisation runs various projects, of which the online encyclopedia Wikipedia is best known.

Kennisland advised the Wikimedia Foundation on the (re)use of GLAM-data. In this case we focused on the data about the usage of collections on Wikipedia. Out of our research emerged a toolset which enables heritage institutions to place digitised cultural objects in the Wikimedia Commons image bank more easily.

EYE manages the preservation of film heritage of both Dutch and foreign films shown in the Netherlands, for future generations. The museum aims to promote a lively film culture in the Netherlands.

Together with EYE we were part of the large digitisation project Images for the Future, in which a large amount of the Dutch audiovisual heritage was preserved for the future. In the context of this project we, for example, organised Celluloid Remix, a video remix competition with the use of historical fragments from the EYE film collection.

Sound and Vision is an institute for media culture and a museum. It contains one of the largest media collections in the world. Besides radio and television, the institute also archives other forms of media, such as written press, political prints, websites and media-related objects.

Together with a number of other partners, Sound and Vision worked with us for seven years to develop Images for the Future, the largest digitisation project for audiovisual heritage in Europe. We also worked on different spin-offs and other projects, such as Open Images and Open Culture Data.

The National Archives are the largest public archive institution in the Netherlands. It is the home of almost a thousand years of Dutch national history, which is stored in 137 kilometers of documents, 800 terabytes of digital files, 15 million photos and 300,000 maps and drawings.

Together with the National Archives, we were part of the large digitisation project Images for the Future, in which a large amount of the Dutch audiovisual heritage was preserved for the future. In the context of this project, for example, we explored the possibilities of social tagging and public participation by placing some of the photos owned by the National Archive on Flickr the Commons.

Europeana is Europe’s largest cultural heritage search engine. By combining databases from over 3,000 European cultural heritage institutions it provides a unique online perspective on Europe’s cultural heritage. Kennisland worked with Europeana on multiple projects, such as Art up your Tab, the Licensing Framework, EuropeanaConnect and Europeana Sounds. Read more about our collaboration with Europeana.

On this page there’s an overview of all projects, publications and other cases in which Kennisland and Europeana collaborated. You can also find opinion articles and news messages related to Europeana.

In 2016, Amsterdam was declared the Capital of Innovation (“iCapital”) of Europe. Kennisland was one of the partners in the development of the winning proposal, which was named Accelerating Amsterdam’s Assets. With the prize money, we developed Amsterdammers, Make Your City!.

Previously, together with the municipality of Amsterdam, KL shook up the education sector with the crowdsourcing challenge Our New School. With our social labs in, among others, Amsteldorp and around the Corfuplantsoen we worked on social issues in the neighbourhood.

With the “Living a Whole Life” project (sponsored by the Ministry of HWS), Kennisland has initiated a new, positive movement around growing old better – a movement of pioneers who all have an innovative vision for nursing care, who have different ideas about how it should be organised.

As part of the so called ‘Expert Program’, Kennisland developed a ‘breakthrough process’ for the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport. Experts came together to discuss cross-border social challenges that require new solutions. In doing so, they constantly reflected on their cooperation process.

Nesta is a global innovation foundation. Together with Nesta and other partners, we have organised the European Social Innovation Competition since 2013. The aim of this project was to further develop initiatives for social innovation and to help realise their potential. 

Earlier, Nesta and KL worked together in Apps for Europe, a thematic network that organises open data competitions.

With interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research, DRIFT contributes to a better understanding of major social changes and new ways of thinking, doing and organising that are required for this, to be more capable of influencing these processes.

What could be the biggest help for urban innovators? That question was central to the Challenge Stad van de Toekomst (City of the Future Challenge) in 2015 and 2016.

Since we started to focus on education in the Netherlands in 2007, the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science has funded many of our educational projects. Projects we worked on include the Innovation Impulse for Education and Teachers as Education Pioneers. We also did projects in the cultural sector and in the digital domain, one of which was Digital Pioneers.

The Ministry of Education, Culture and Science wants to investigate where students themselves see the bottlenecks in the transition from mbo (secondary vocational education) to hbo (higher vocational education) and what solutions they propose for this. In collaboration with the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences and ResearchNed, we support more than three hundred mbo-4 and hbo students in developing plans to improve the transition between mbo and hbo in seven regions.

KL, in collaboration with research agency Significant, was commissioned to investigate the ‘Social service time’ program in order to discover what the (in)effective elements are. Within the ZonMW program ‘Unlimited participation!’ (‘Onbeperkt meedoen!’), four projects each work in their own way to promote the participation of young people with a disability. KL brings the projects together in a learning network to exchange knowledge and experiences about, among other things, increasing equality of opportunity.

Yuverta, one of the largest Dutch organisations for vocational education, wants to offer vocational education that is in line with current social and ecological issues. Under the supervision of Kennisland, eight Yuverta institutions are investigating and experimenting what this educational vision can mean in practice.

Make a Difference (MaD) is a think-and-do collaborative platform which comes up with innovative solutions for social challenges in Hong Kong.

Together with MaD we did for example The LIBoratory project, in which we set up a social lab in Sham Shui Po – one of Hong Kong’s poorest districts – to explore how libraries can be more relevant spaces for citizens in this area. For us, this project is a unique opportunity to develop our approaches in a different context. Read more about our other adventures in Hong Kong.

The Institute for Information Law (IViR) is one of the largest research centers in the field of information law in the world.

Together with Waag and IViR, KL set up the Dutch department of Creative Commons. Besides that, together with IViR, the Europeana Foundation and the Bibliothèque Nationale de Luxembourg, we developed and implemented the Licensing Framework for Europeana.eu. Another valuable collaboration resulted in OutofCopyright.eu, a website that allows people to determine the copyright status of heritage.

Social Enterprise NL (SENL) is the driving force behind a movement of social entrepreneurs in the Netherlands.

Together with them, Kennisland explored the incentive instruments for social enterprises. The resultant agenda was presented to the Members of Parliament on 23 January 2014 (read more). Kennisland and SENL were also partners in SEED (Social Entrepreneur Exchange and Development), one of the consortia that ran the fifth round of the Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs programme from 2013 to 2015.

Between 2004 and 2018, Kennisland coordinated the public activities of Creative Commons in the Netherlands. Together with Waag and the Institute for Information Law we worked on the development and promotion of Creative Commons licenses in the Netherlands.

On 14 September 2018, an independent Dutch Chapter of Creative Commons was founded. This chapter supports the sharing of knowledge and creativity in order to build an honest, accessible and innovative world.

Hivos is an international organisation that explores new solutions for persistent global problems like discrimination, inequality, abuse of power and the exhaustion of the earth and our living environment.

Together with Hivos, we organised the Social Innovation Safari, in which we produced a methodology for developing our collective problem-solving capabilities and skills by working on real-life challenges. We also did the Wicked Series, in which pioneers from Greece, the Netherlands and India tackled wicked problems. The Wicked Series was followed up by Lab2: Experimental Learning Spaces for Social Innovation, a continuing knowledge exchange in order to further explore and develop new approaches and opportunities for social innovation.

The European Social Innovation Competition promotes and supports social innovation in Europe and provides a platform for leading European innovators to support new initiatives, take them further and learn from each other. Ashoka is one of Kennisland’s partners in this project, and also in the Wellbeing Project in Bilbao.

How do we put creative intelligence even more effectively to use for complex social issues? And how can public and creative organisations more effectively tap into opportunities to realise innovative initiatives? These questions are central to the exploratory research that Kennisland is conducting for the Public Prosecution Service.

Commissioned by the Flemish organisation the Social Innovation Factory, we organised a development program for social entrepreneurs who have innovative ideas about informal care.

Together with Utrecht University, HKU and Coaching in Culture, Kennisland developed the learning programme Leadership in Culture. In this programme, leaders in culture meet to discuss and share knowledge. Together with other professionals and sectors they delve into new, unexplored possibilities.

In 2018 we started a cooperation with the Belgian policy domain Culture, Youth, Sports and Media and the Antwerp Management School. In this year, LinC started as an international programme which goes by the name LinC Lage Landen (LinC in the Netherlands and Belgium). We also started LinC Utrecht, the first local edition of LinC for leaders in culture.

For the Dutch Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations we have conducted research into innovative practical examples in the public sector for the InAxis database. Besides that, we worked together in Slimmernetwerk (Smarter Network), a platform and network with online and offline activities for professionals in the public sector. The network provides an answer to the lack of room for bottom-up innovation within government, unnecessarily high hierarchical barriers and fragmented governmental responsibilities.

Together with the ministry, Kennisland also set up Het Beleidslab (the Policy Lab), with the aim to obtain new insights into users, issues, approaches and solutions within a number of cases – concerning the quality of newly built houses and energy saving in the owner-occupied housing sector.

SIX works globally to facilitate purposeful cross-sector conversations, that challenge and inspire people to use innovation to increase social impact.

In 2011, KL organised the SIX Spring School, together with the worldwide Social Innovation eXchange netwerk (SIX), The Young Foundation and Dialogue Café. More than 100 international participants related to governments, companies, NGOs, science, design and media discussed how the power of citizens can be used to solve social issues. Among other things, this Spring School led to a Co-creation Guide.

In the province of North Brabant, care employers’ organisation Transvorm, together with educational institution Avans and the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport, started the Action Program for the Preservation of Care Personnel Care & Welfare. In the Action Programme, fifteen healthcare organisations and six educational institutions propose actions for the retention of healthcare professionals. Kennisland and partner Equalis make the action program a learning experience.

The Municipality of Rotterdam has great aspirations regarding the education in the city. One of those is to give ambitious teachers the chance to develop optimally and to take control over new education initiatives themselves.

Together with Thomas More Hogeschool and De Nederlandse school (The Dutch School) we dare teachers in Rotterdam to put their ambition into practice in Broedplaats010 (Breeding Ground 010).

Over 150 students of higher education institutions in Istanbul dive into issues in the field of mobility. During the imeceLAB incubation programme they attend workshops and develop innovations.

Kennisland was asked by social innovation platform imece to support in evaluating this incubation programme.

Waag operates at the intersection of science, technology and the arts. It explores the social and cultural impact of new technologies, guided by the values of fairness, openness and inclusivity.

Together with Waag, among others, KL wrote the publication Accelerating Amsterdam’s Assets, about how Amsterdam can make better use of the potentials of society. Because of this proposal, the city became Europe’s innovation capital in 2017. Together with Waag we were also a part of the COMMUNIA Network, of Creative Commons Nederland, of DISC (that strived for the democratisation of open source software and open content), of Apps for Europe and of the Social Innovation Network of the Netherlands.