New book out: DIY Days LA

About Learn Do Share

Learn Do Share (LDS) is a grassroots innovation engine; a combination of events, labs and peer production. We are a community for open collaboration, design fiction and social innovation.

The three words LEARN, DO and SHARE embody our philosophy: we learn from everyone. we do by prototyping. we share what we learn.

Our events and labs are gatherings for ad-hoc groups to meet, ideate and work out concepts for a common good.

Our peer production cycles help groups stay together to co-create prototypes of their collective imaginations. The most prominent are Caine’s Arcade, My Sky Is Falling, and The BUKE.

Our books, documentaries and projects are carried forth by our participants to inspire other people to do the same.

Our Learn Do Share methodology and framework, which we like to call an OS (operating system) is being adapted by Universities, organizations and makerspaces as a tool to help tackle wicked problems by harnessing storytelling, play, designing thinking and collaboration. Over the last four years, we’ve collaborated with Jorgen van der Sloot and FreedomLab to design and prototype a social innovation lab to explore solutions for complex problems. The Learn Do Share lab runs at our events as well as having been staged for Columbia University, the UN, the City of Los Angeles, UNICEF and the Danish Government.

It amazes me every time how much love and imaginence DIY Days participants give to make these books happen. This edition is special as we evolve our format. It features the 1st out of 4 steps of our EDIT co-design process: E stands for Empathy, the following books will cover Define, Ideate and Test. In L.A. we collaborated with the Goldhirsh Foundation to substantiate the empathy phase. Looking into an extensive report on the status quo and trends for L.A., our group discussed, mapped and created 9 new projects that are well and truly underway now. You can get in touch if you’re keen to shape the world around you!

Another treat are the metamaps that are scattered throughout the book. The entire event, and most importantly, our design challenges, were mapped as browser-based amplified mindmaps on metamaps.cc. If your work is related to sense- and decision-making, you should check it out!

Lastly, a big shout out goes to Designful Studio for giving the book an absolutely loveable design and helping us re-brand Learn Do Share. We think they captured LA’s “diversity as identity” in every aesthetic stroke.

You can open the book by clicking on the image. And see our previous books here.