This panel explores Living Labs as situated, co-created, and digitally networked responses to ecological collapse and environmental disconnection. Rooted in the Germanic term "Melle" - a meeting place - the panel brings together case studies reimagining research and practice at the intersection of climate change, digital humanities, and community action. Living Labs, when paired with digital methods, become fertile ground for amplifying local and global knowledges, archiving climate stories, and mobilising data for environmental justice.

Coleman frames the digital archipelago as a metaphor for Living Labs - interconnected islands of action where diverse stakeholders work with urgency, creativity, and care. While Living Labs and Digital Humanities have distinct epistemologies, they share a commitment to situated and participatory inquiry. Bridging these traditions allows for hybrid, interventionist approaches responding to climate and social injustice through methodological pluralism.

Coleman and Healy introduce SWISP Lab, a critical futures living lab reimagining research as a co-created space where climate storytelling, speculative a/r/tography, and digital creativities converge. Hannes and Devleminck explore meta-design and placemaking tools in participatory urban futures, developing playful, interactive research scenarios to address urban challenges. Hostetler and Jacobs consider living labs as postdigital responses to polycrisis, exploring modes of co-creation that foreground care, affect, and situated knowledge. Healy proposes data-walking as a method of data-engaged inquiry that is situated, bodily, and attuned to complexity.

This panel demonstrates how Living Labs can serve as archipelagos of creativity, criticality, and social transformation in a time of ecological urgency, fostering collective agency, storytelling, and alternative world-making in the face of complex global challenges.