Innovative Citizen

Technology has completely permeated our lives. Innovations are emerging ever more rapidly and in ever greater numbers. In the process, modern bio-, material and information sciences are increasingly intervening at deeper levels, and their effects are becoming both more powerful and more unpredictable. It is therefore important that scientific agendas, the concrete goals of research and development projects and the translation of results into practice be shaped democratically.

The representatives of the Innovative Citizen movement aim to achieve precisely this in their recurring festivals.

On the one hand, citizens must be able to participate in modern technological development in order to help shape the contexts of application and become more empowered in their knowledge and decisions regarding technology. On the other hand, scientists must take responsibility – given their central role in progress and the freedom guaranteed by the constitution – and measure and align their work with the principles of sustainable development. These two approaches converge in the idea of the tech-savvy yet tech-critical citizen—the Innovative Citizen.

Furthermore, another central aspect is that sharing knowledge about technology and collaborating on technology can play a vital role in revitalizing local communities. These efforts strengthen neighborhoods and municipalities, hold potential for modern and sustainable economic activity and counteract the cultural and economic fragmentation of society.

Innovative Citizen – specifically, this refers to a festival held once a year in the fall in the Ruhr region, various research projects involving citizen participation that are guided by the Innovative Citizen concept, and an increasing number of smaller workshops, lectures, interventions and excursions that Fraunhofer UMSICHT conducts with partners throughout the year.

The Innovative Citizen Festival is an opportunity to learn, hack and critically discuss new and familiar technologies together. No technology is too complex and no practice too trivial to be examined. There are workshops on quantum physics alongside those on darning socks, and we succeed in building bridges between the two topics.

The Innovative Citizen Festival has been held since 2014 and has taken place eight times since then, with a total of over 1,000 participants (2014-2019, 2023-2025). Previous venues have included the U and the Werkhalle in Dortmund, as well as the Sanaa Building in Essen.

• Folkwang Universität der Künste
• FabLAb of Hochschule Ruhr-West
• Hochschule Niederrhein

• Sustainability by design
• DWI Leibniz-Institut für Interaktive Materialien
• KlarText
• Gartenverein Sonnenblick