COCO
Commoning Cottbus
INTRO
COCO is a student-led urban living lab that connects university education with everyday life in Cottbus. It reuses a vacant central space for situated experimentation, collaborative work with local stakeholders and engagement with broader publics at the interface between culture and urban planning. With attention to the social and spatial changes shaping the city, it explores how people live, perceive and imagine everyday spaces, while offering an open place for encounter and exchange.
STEP 0
Setting the scope
Before COCO took shape as a living lab, we spent two years exploring Cottbus and the wider Lusatia region through small teaching projects. We tested ideas in lived space, met local stakeholders and learned how everyday life in the city is shaped by ongoing change. When in October 2024 we took over a vacant space in the centre, it gave us the chance to bring these experiences together and create a place that connects university education with the everyday concerns of the city.
Our mission is to create an open space where publics can meet, work together and explore how urban life is changing. We want to support students, residents and local initiatives who are curious about the city and who wish to develop their own ideas. The lab works at the interface between culture and urban planning and focuses on challenges that matter in Cottbus, including social and spatial transformation, questions of belonging and accessibility.
Our formats are easy to join and grounded in the local context. Workshops, neighbourhood events, actions, exhibitions and small learning experiments allow us to test ideas quickly and learn from direct interaction. Through these activities we hope to build new connections, strengthen cooperation with local partners and shape low threshold social infrastructure for the city. We keep things inclusive, practical and connected to everyday life needs and concerns.
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STEP 1
Theme Choice
Picking what matters most
The themes that guide COCO emerge directly from the city around it. As an open space in the centre of Cottbus, the lab encounters the questions people bring with them, whether they concern mobility, housing, youth opportunities or the change of urban cultures. Students contribute their perspectives to this. These everyday concerns gradually shape the direction of our work and give COCO its distinctive focus.
Cottbus is a city in change, its social space is caught in a tension between the positive notions of innovation, diversified population and new investments, and troubled waters of disappointment, uncertainty, and fear of the other. These tensions raise questions about belonging, access and the future of shared spaces. As COCO is open and easy to reach, it can bring students, young people, residents and local actors into direct exchange about these developments and the experiences behind them.
The idea of commoning helps us to understand urban space as a shared resource built through collective effort, introducing perspectives that often remain at the margins of formal planning processes. COCO workshops, walks, mapping exercises and creative activities reveal how the city is lived, perceived and imagined on an everyday level. Through its activities COCO shapes a new understanding of how we can live together and address structural challenges using a co-design approach.
Step 2 Exploration
Discovering places, stories, and challenges
When we first moved into the vacant store, exploration happened on several levels at once. The physical space needed attention, but so did the question of how to work together and what kind of place COCO should become. Students began shaping the rooms, testing different layouts and learning how the space influences encounters. At the same time, they walked the surroundings, spoke with neighbours and observed. These early impressions gave us a sense of the rhythms that shape everyday life.
Building visibility was another challenge. We opened the doors regularly, took part in public events, introduced ourselves to local stakeholders and invited people in for conversations and events. These activities helped us understand how to adapt various formats to the needs of different groups. They also brought us into contact with initiatives active in Cottbus and widened the network of people interested in COCO.
The practical work was accompanied by ongoing reflection. Students discussed ideas of placemaking, participation and commoning and considered what it means to take responsibility for a shared place in the city. Questions about openness, access and the evolving role of shared space guided many of our early decisions. Through this mix of hands-on work and collective reflection, the empty space gradually turned into a place which engages plural publics.
STEP 3
Experimentation and Co-Creation
Trying things out and testing ideas built together with local communities
COCO grows directly from activities that take place in its space and surroundings. Students test ideas through hands on formats such as workshops, repair cafés, book exchanges, pop up cafés, film and music evenings, panel discussions, and other creative events. These formats are deliberately varied and immediate, allowing us to observe how participants respond and to adapt ideas directly on site.
Working with local initiatives is central to this process. Collaborations with groups and initiatives active in the surrounding, as well as with stakeholders, shape many of the events. Shared preparation for these activities teaches students how communication, agreements and clear responsibilities matter in open transdisciplinary work.
To understand everyday concerns, we take formats into public space. Mapping stands, short surveys, street level conversations and city walks provides with encounters that reveal knowledge often invisible in formal planning processes and show how different publics relate to the city.
Inside COCO, regular opening hours create continuity of moments of exchange. People join to talk, look at student work or share experiences linked to Cottbus and the region. Through these varied formats we learn about inclusion, methods of open conversations and how small, situated actions can contribute to collaborative place making.
STEP 4
Urban Showcase
Bringing it all to the city
COCO became visible in the city through a series of events that required careful planning, outreach and collaboration. The launch event in November marked the first moment when the empty rooms opened to the public. Students guided visitors through the still unfinished space and invited them to share what they felt was missing in the city. This early feedback shaped the months that followed.
Work carried out throughout the summer semester brought more people into COCO. Regional Futures sessions invited residents to discuss hopes and concerns about the changing city. Students facilitated these conversations, learning how to translate local stories into themes for further work. The neighbourhood summer festival, organised together with groups active in the Schloßkirchpassage, brought even more people into COCO. These events demanded logistical coordination, communication across organisations and the ability to react calmly when things shifted on the day. Residents and initiatives can use COCO’s rooms free of charge, shaping an open place of exchange.
More than thirty events contributed to COCO’s presence in the city. While some activities created small occasions for informal encounters, others sought to bring representatives from city administration, culture and education into dialogue with young people about shaping shared urban futures.
User led video stories
Vignettes from Sf:ius
Along the interior walls of CoCo, a sequence of posters sets the tone of the space. Under the heading “What we pay attention to” in blue letters, short statements act as both reminders and commitments: “In our common space everyone is welcome;” “We create a safe space, free of discrimination;” “We always act for the common good;” “We democratically vote on all activities;” “We take responsibility for our resources;” “We offer space for respectful discourse.” These principles frame CoCo as a small but intentional counterpoint to the broader urban issues the students describe.
Outside, the city speaks through another set of messages. The Boomtown Cottbus federal and state initiative presents the city as a future hub of innovation, green transition, and sustainable growth—announcing investment figures and projected new jobs. These policies respond to long-term regional challenges: economic restructuring after German unification, the decline of the coal industry, and the social tensions that have followed. Locals often express frustration with social alienation and uneven development, while NGOs work to create inclusive meeting places. The university, too, has initiated new forms of engagement.
The students tell us this while sitting in a room they have been gradually reclaiming as their own. Once a small shop within a passageway, it now functions as a collective living room, open to the public through its glass walls. They have held classes here, hosted game nights, organised bike-repair workshops, and staged small concerts and jam sessions. Across the passage, another room displays artworks and design projects from their peers. Though they describe these activities as “small,” pride surfaces as they speak. “We learned how to organise and take care of the place.”
One student smiles as he recounts: “I organised a Super Mario Kart games night,” describing how they brought their own controllers and spent the evening together in town rather than returning each to their room in the dorms. Another reflects on the broader context: “A lot of the students travel. They don’t stay in Cottbus. They think there’s nothing here to do.” She explains that the historic centre, where CoCo sits, often lacks spaces for young people. Their response has been proactive: “We went around asking people what they need. We want to give them a space… We want to do something for the community. So we went delivering coffee in the neighbourhoods. We organized a cake night, offered free cake to visitors”
Through these small acts of occupation and programming, CoCo becomes a modest yet meaningful urban micro-infrastructure—one that attempts to bridge social gaps, activate underused space, and reimagine the historic centre as a place where young people can both gather and contribute.
STEP 5
Evaluation
Looking back to move forward
The first cycle of COCO achieved two essential goals. The vacant space in the city centre was successfully established as an urban living lab, and its work became embedded in university education. This created a setting where students could learn close to spaces of everyday life, engage with publics and take responsibility for their place in the city.
Reflections from the semester highlight both the value and the effort behind this work. Students appreciated learning in a real-world environment but also noted how demanding it is to organise events, maintain the space and sustain public interest. They learned that successful living lab requires clear communication, shared responsibility and ongoing visibility in the city. Encounters during workshops, opening hours and larger events gave insight into how different groups experience change in Cottbus and what kinds of formats support meaningful exchange.
The first year has established COCO as an accessible place for encounter and collaborative learning. The next cycles will focus on opening COCO further to the city, sharpening its thematic profile and working toward long term continuity so that it becomes a stable part of Cottbus’s everyday life.
Psugo Cottbus Credits
Core organising team
Silke Weidner
Chair of Urban Management, BTU
Hendrik Weiner
Research assistant at Chair of Urban Management, BTU
Tihomir Viderman
Research assistant at Chair of Urban Management, BTU
Sinah Hackenberg
Research assistant at Chair of Urban Management, BTU
Pauline Heinhaus
Student assistant at Chair of Urban Management, BTU
Lilly Deerberg
Student assistant at Chair of Urban Management, BTU
Student organising and operating teams
Winter term 2024/25
Amira Al Meklef, Marie Alter, Ricarda Budke, Ivanna Burlaka, Theo Eckert, Melina Ehrenteit, Moritz Franke, Julian Franz, Julien Gorek, Charlotte Keller, Kai Laeppchen, Enya Meyer, Luca Otremba, Marten Quos, Tim Uhthoff, Steven Wedde
Summer term 2025
Jolin Baldschun, Michael Bonhage, Batukaan Emmi, Hannes Goos, Niclas Gorecki, Bela Gottschalk, Nele Doering, Fynn Krause, Emma Kuettner, Aron Kurzweg, Gregor Stamborski, Anton Thiele, Annelie Weiss
Collaborators
Losmachen e.V.
Verein zur Förderung der Lausitzer Zivilgesellschaft
Opferperspektive
Solidarisch gegen Rassismus, Diskriminierung und rechte Gewalt e.V.
Freies Radio für Cottbus
Lausitzer Perspektiven e.V. and Bürgerregion Lausitz
Young Caritas
FabLab Cottbus e.V. – Die Mitmachwerkstatt
Centre for Continuing Education, BTU
Institute of Urban Planning, BTU
Triaglis Team of the Historic Core of Aglantzia
Institute of Social Work, BTU
Institute of Health, BTU
Institute of Health, BTU
Humau
Humanistisches Jugendwerk Cottbus e.V.
AlterPerimentale Alter-Peripherie-Experiment, Praxisforschung in ländlichen Räumen
City of Cottbus – Department 41 – Culture
musiCOCO
Prajna Kumarawsamy
Christian Heyer