On 17 September 2026, Barbara Kieslinger from the Centre for Social Innovation (ZSI) participated in the session “Living Labs for Circular Regenerative Fashion: Co-creating Science-Based Systemic Solutions Across the Global North & South”, organised by the European Network of Living Labs (ENoLL) as part of the Science Summit at the 81st United Nations General Assembly.
The session brought together perspectives from policy, research, entrepreneurship and Living Labs to discuss how the fashion sector can move beyond incremental improvements towards genuinely circular and regenerative systems. Contributions addressed issues ranging from resource use and supply-chain transparency to social justice, second-hand business models, digital experimentation and community-based approaches to repair and reuse.
Public libraries as spaces for circular innovation
In the Living Lab showcase, Kieslinger presented make-a-thek, the Horizon Europe project coordinated by ZSI. The project develops modular and replicable makerspaces in public libraries, turning libraries into accessible places where citizens can make, repair, exchange, experiment and learn about circular fashion and heritage crafts.
Kieslinger highlighted the importance of creating spaces in which communities are not simply recipients of sustainability solutions but actively participate in developing them. One example presented during the session came from Antwerp, where young people have taken an active role in designing and running their own circular fashion space. Such activities illustrate the wider make-a-thek approach: combining social innovation, practical experimentation and community knowledge to explore new pathways towards circularity.
The project connects activities in Europe with initiatives in Ghana, Indonesia, the Philippines, South Africa and Chile. This international dimension was particularly relevant to the session’s focus on collaboration between the Global North and Global South. Rather than approaching knowledge exchange as a one-way transfer of solutions, make-a-thek seeks to create opportunities for locally developed practices and knowledge to circulate across contexts.
Circular knowledge needs to travel in multiple directions
During the concluding roundtable on systemic change, Kieslinger emphasised the need to build stronger bridges between the Global North and Global South and to give greater recognition to grassroots upcycling initiatives, social businesses and local creative innovators.
Her contribution underlined a central principle for international collaboration on circularity: knowledge should travel in multiple directions. Locally rooted practices and innovations can provide important insights for addressing global sustainability challenges, while Living Labs can create environments in which different forms of knowledge and expertise meet, are tested in practice and adapted to local circumstances.
This perspective closely reflects ZSI’s work on social innovation and the make-a-thek project’s ambition to combine circularity with participation, inclusion, and locally grounded experimentation. By positioning public libraries as hubs for making and shared learning, make-a-thek demonstrates how accessible public infrastructures can enable citizens to participate directly in the transition towards more sustainable systems of fashion and craft.
The wider UN Science Summit discussion also highlighted that transforming fashion requires more than individual technological innovations or changes in consumer behaviour. Lasting change depends on collaboration between citizens, researchers, policymakers, businesses and civil society, alongside the policy and economic conditions needed to move successful experiments beyond the pilot stage.
For make-a-thek, participation in the Science Summit provided an opportunity to bring the experiences of community-based circular innovation into this global discussion – and to demonstrate how experimentation at the local level can contribute to wider systemic transformation.
The full session can be watched here: https://enoll.org/2026/09/22/from-our-skin-to-our-ecosystems-rethinking-fashion-through-living-labsfrom-our-skin-to-our-ecosystems-rethinking-fashion-through-living-labs/
