D2.4 Guidelines for translating for marginalised and vulnerable communities

The aim of this deliverable is to provide guidelines for translations for co-creation in technology development with marginalised communities. Guidelines can take different forms: they can describe best practices, provide material to be used to improve existing processes or to initiate new ones; or they can acknowledge and highlight challenges, identify problematic choices, envision alternative paths, so that the next iteration can go further than what was explored so far. The goal of the CommuniCity project has been a very ambitious one: to develop models of technology innovation and co-creation together with marginalised communities. There are no generally applicable, viable processes of technology-related and technology-based interventions empowering marginalised communities. CommuniCity is an attempt to learn in this unchartered space, and as to be expected in risky endeavours, the most important lessons are in whatdid not work as wished or expected, and in what incrementally, along the way, and by design or chance, turned out to improve in general and scalable ways. Work package 2 of CommuniCity tried to capture these learnings, and to translate them into guidelines.Based on data collected through surveys embedded in the piloting process within CommuniCity, as well as various qualitative data collection methods employed by research partners involved in WP2, co-creation processes utilized in the project were analysed. This analysis suggests that the current piloting process, defined as the CommuniCity Agile Piloting Process, enables and supports certain forms of co-creation, while allowing- only in several cases- some other forms. This likely stems from the inherent features of the CommuniCity piloting model that centres city-led and tech- driven innovation through a time and budget limited frame for piloting.The deliverable acknowledges that the Agile Piloting process achieves its ambitious goals through an accelerated piloting process. This process demonstrated agility and capacity for incremental learning and for supporting co-creation "for" and to some extent "with" communities. However, co-creation “by” communities, which entails a leading role of communities in the technology and innovation and co-creation processes, shared ownership and decision making, was achieved with the current model only in a selected number of cases in the final piloting round.Analysis of the entire CommuniCity project as a process shows that critical reflection and knowledge feedback loops between different types of partners, including academic researchers engaged in the WP2, embedded by-design in the CommuniCity project, deepen the understanding of the concept of “co-creation” within marginalized communities. Furthermore, reflection practice and lessons from the on-the-ground piloting experiences indicate directions for future improvements. The selected piloting process was accommodating various co-creation practices in different cities but leaving somewhat confined space for reimagination and rethinking of more impactful co-creation activities led by communities.To maintain the model’s agility while enhancing its learning capacities, future applications should not forget to incorporate independent, reflective, creative and open research and collaboration by-design, ensuring that ideation, creation and application of technology involve all stakeholders. In particular, the "by community" co-creation model of innovation translates to a community-driven model, revolving around transparency, trust, accountability, joint ownership, public value and oversight, and balancing efficiency with purposeful technological city innovation. Such models are still under development and awaiting full implementation. The document drafts several practical guidelines that could bring technological innovation within marginalised communities closer to this model.The final draft of this deliverable has been reviewed by the Ethics Board through meetings and written feedback, and their input has been incorporated into the final version.