… The ‘SDGs Laboratory Learning Journey’ describes the experience gained from designing, planning, implementing and evaluating SDGs laboratories, namely “SDGs Innovation Labs” (ILs) and “SDGs Co-Learning Labs” (CLLs), carried out in different European pilot regions between November 2020 and June 2021.

The report, on the one hand, describes and assesses the experiences of facilitators and participants, analysing what they have learned from the labs; and on the other, it aims to provide guidance, describing these learning journeys and giving practical insights into the materials used and the organisation of both lab formats, with different stakeholders from companies, start-ups and other organisations from the agribusiness and food production sector and HEIs.

The evaluation of both SDGs laboratories formats has shown that they are beneficial in providing innovative learning environments for companies, HEIs and other stakeholders. Depending on how the ILs were designed, they enabled participants to engage more intensively with the SDGs for the first time (e.g. awareness raising, capacity building), or to take a fresh look at already familiar corporate sustainability challenges from a fresh perspective of the SDGs. CLLs, in contrast, succeeded in bringing together various stakeholders from different parts of the sector who would otherwise not have met, creating an atmosphere of open exchange and enabling changes of perspective. On top, some of the CLLS have also sparked new regional collaborations between actors in the sector.