The Lab was built on the premise of sharing and engaging in each other’s processes. In our view this ask for a flattened hierarchy. Participants from different research areas and with different levels of experience, from MA levels to PhD candidates and Professors, gathered in groups seeking to share thoughts and reflect on the experiences and outcomes from the Lab workshops and presentations – all the time with their own research interests as points of departure. Each breakout-group included members from the faculty, which acted more as moderators than teachers.
The workshops were experimental in their nature and asked for participants to share and unfold processes,reflection as processing, opposed to finished results, which can put the contributors in vulnerable situations. Precarity, risk and failure are also key factors in the projects that were presented as material for preparation before the Lab – in the Critical Reflection as Exploring phase and were important premises in all the Lab workshops. Furthermore, the open-to-public “process canvas” on Research Catalogue, had to be established as a safe space that would allow for contributions of unfinished process material. Teachers and staff were collaborating alongside MA students and PhD candidates in this vulnerable sharing of processes. It was an important factor in creating a safe space that the collaboration was across levels of experience, and that the sharing involved, to a degree, stepping into uncertainty for all the contributors. The design of the process canvas was also flat hierarchically, as well as deliberately “messy” to support that reflection also can be inconclusive, messy, and confusing.