Science you can walk into.
A living lab is a real place out in the world where anyone can do real science. Ours are local: a community garden, a greenhouse, the lake down the road. We watch them, measure them, wonder about them and look after them together. The door is open, and the network is yours to grow.
EU GREEN Illuminating Discovery · Winning imageA living lab is not white coats and locked doors. It is a real place, used by real people, where researchers, neighbours and young people learn side by side by actually doing science, over seasons, together. The REAL in our name stands for Reflective Engagement with Analytics for Learning, but the realest thing about us is simpler: the places are local, they are ours, and we use them every day.
We run all of it on one practice we call the love bomb: a deliberate kindness turned three ways at once, toward yourself, toward each other, and toward the living world. If you are curious, you already belong here.
Three teaching sites, built on one repeatable design, each streaming the same open readings, water, humidity, light and soil. The same science runs in a community garden, a university greenhouse, and a template anyone can copy.
The intergenerational garden in Annaghdown where the science meets the soil, the seasons and the neighbours.
The university site, where students run the readings and the physics department builds the solar-powered sensor rigs.
The proving node, built and documented as an open blueprint so any school or garden can copy it and join.
And it is growing. Copy the template, bring your school or garden in, and become a site on the map.
You do not need a degree or permission. You need curiosity and a phone. Pick one and go.
Photograph any wild thing, a bird, a bug, a mushroom, a frog. Mother Nature identifies it and awards it a Biodiversity Hero card, scored on real conservation data.
Open the Badge Lab →Worked, real studies you can read and run, starting with the applied-maths of a real frog clutch: logistic growth, survival, and where the maths meets metamorphosis.
See a worked study →Bring a place in. Schools, gardens and communities can copy the template greenhouse, start streaming, and become part of the living lab.
Start a site →The prize-winning tadpole at the top of this page was photographed in the DANÚ pond. Keep looking at a real place over time, and it answers you.
Real science, in a real place, found by looking. No one staged it. Someone just kept paying attention, which is the whole invitation.
Some of it is digital and you can do it anywhere. Some of it happens in the ground, with artists, families and whole communities. All of it treats you as a scientist, not an audience.
Nature-based creative participation for non-speaking autistic children, who read and express the world through pattern. Witnessed through ethical listening, not extractive documentation. With ATU, DANÚ and the This Is Me Initiative in Donegal.
A community-built wildlife gallery and biodiversity trail along the lake, where grandparents and grandchildren draw the protected species of Lough Corrib side by side.
The Self-Regulating Lab, AI Bird Identification, Becoming Michael Jordan Through Numbers, Becoming a Frog, Skies of Home, Playground Science, and My World in Patterns. Run them yourself, in a browser.
The programme behind the Lab at ATU: a study of how the places and tools we design shape what a learner believes they can become. Care before prediction, dignity by design.
The Lab works the way the European Network of Living Labs describes: citizens, public bodies, industry and academia building together in real-life settings rather than in isolation.
ATU and the REAL Analytics programme, with Dr Mossy Kelly and his students in ATU Physics engineering the solar-powered sensor rigs. Directed by Dr Etain Kiely, with Dr Yvonne Lang and the Early Childhood programmes.
Gairdín DANÚ, a community garden and charity, the This Is Me Initiative in Donegal, families, schools and the Men's Shed.
Creative Ireland via Galway County Council, the CLÁR programme, the NPWS and Biodiversity Office, the HEA, and the EU GREEN alliance.
Artists Emma Donoghue and Emer McDermott, occupational therapy, and the evaluation partner Amicitia.
The European Network of Living Labs assesses a living lab against six building blocks. This is how the REAL Living Lab meets each.
One question across every site: does this make someone feel capable? A network on one repeatable design, where replicability is the route to sustainability.
A multi-method approach: environmental sensing, citizen science, creative participation and learning analytics. Governed through ATU and the DANÚ charity, with safeguarding built for working with children.
Open source, an open live dataset per site, and an open hardware-and-method blueprint others can copy. Privacy by architecture. GDPR by design.
Three real settings in daily use. Participants co-create, not just take part: students and community help decide what is grown, what is measured and what is asked.
Longitudinal open datasets from day one, European recognition through EU GREEN, the willow sensory enclosure, and evidence gathered with the CreaTures framework.
A full Quadruple Helix with institutional backing from ATU and a three-site network with a template designed to scale across Europe.
The REAL Living Lab is the citizen-facing home of REAL Analytics, a research programme at Atlantic Technological University, Galway. Its anchor site is Gairdín DANÚ, and it grows by helping others build their own.
It is directed by Dr Etain Kiely, whose work studies how the environments we design shape what a learner believes they can become. The methodology is the same across every site. So is the commitment to dignity.
No tracking. No cookies. No accounts. The tools run in your browser and the data stays yours. GDPR by architecture, not by policy.