In the planning stage of the laboratory, Zhang Qianxi and her team members firstly outlined the general direction of the laboratory activities: city walks and themed exhibitions. For city walks, they selected the most representative blocks in Ningbo as samples, including Xiaolwen Street in Ningbo historical district, Kaiming Street in Ningbo initial commercial district, and the Old Bund, true representatives of Ningbo's modern history. Coinciding with Ningbo Daily's collection of urban cultural construction projects, Zhang Qianxi and her teammates – after a summer of intense preparation – designed the "100 years of Bund" urban themed exhibition. Although a collaboration with Ningbo Daily did not come to fruition, Zhang and her team designed the lab's first raw materials, which laid a solid foundation for their subsequent external collaborations.

In July 2021, the lab got in touch with Impression City, a local shopping mall enterprise upon the recommendation of members of staff in the UNNC Business Development Office. From initial contact, the bidding, and the final exhibition, Zhang Qianxi and her laboratory members spent half a year on preparation, and finally the exhibition project titled "What is the City" blossomed. "Impression City was organising the 'Season of the Year' exhibition, and the tonality of the theme fit perfectly with the idea of the laboratory," said Zhang. “Because from a research point of view, we advocate a bottom-up idea of urbanism, we believe that the memory of a city belongs to every citizen. We really want the exhibition to go beyond the gallery, embrace the public, and advocate citizen participation." In terms of design, compared with the solemn form of some indoor exhibitions, "What is the City" was installed at the Impression City, which was more open as well as closer to the general public. At the same time, the laboratory also planned a series of interactions with the public, such as Ningbo drawn in a single pen stroke, Lego City, etc., and invited children journalists from Yinzhou Media to explain the exhibition design to the public as young teachers after some training. The feedback was very positive. "By working with social enterprises, we have created a lot of interest," Zhang says. "It's a collaborative process that we didn't get when we were doing research purely on campus."

The successful cooperation with Impression City has brought good social influence to the recognition to laboratory. The Soon, the laboratory recently has received an olive branch from the first ever Ningbo first-created ‘future community’. In the community the lab successfully held their "Future City | Future Community" neighborhood culturale exhibition. "This exhibition innovates in terms of space,” Zhang Qianxi said. “Different from the shopping mall environment of Impression City, this exhibition is set in the public space of the community, where residents come and go every day, creating more interaction with the exhibition.” The exhibition has been repeatedly reported on widely by many media outlets, including such as Zhejiang Daily, Zhejiang Blue Report and more, etc., attracting widespread social attention. In August this year, the laboratory's continuous programme of city walks attracted the attention of the Yinzhou District Publicity Department, and government leaders immediately invited the laboratory to join the Yinzhou Culture International Publicity Project. At present, relying on high-quality material creation and novel and unique activitiesy forms, the laboratory plans to carry out a series of 12-a-year Yinzhou Walk activities per year with the Ningbo Yinzhou District Publicity Department of Ningbo. Not only is the laboratory actively , actively responding to the call of ‘Chinese Culture Confidence’  by General Secretary Xi Jinping, it is and fully supporting Ningbo's urban cultural export and the international dissemination of Chinese culture.

In 2015, when Zhang Qianxi studied in Europe, she found that Western countries are relatively ahead in building child-friendly cities. Germany, for example, has fully integrated children's well-being into social development and urban planning. In addition to various forms and a large number of play areas, almost every community has an entertainment area for children to play. Children are often found playing around the sandpit, with parents encouraging their children to play outdoors. This resonated deeply with Zhang Qianxi, who thinks that with China's rapid urbanisation, we seem to have neglected to allow children to have a happy and playful childhood. If we could create more choices for children and look at urban development from the perspective of children, then we will be able to bring more vitality and innovation to the city.

In 2016, after returning to China, Zhang began to focus on the construction of child-friendly cities and took part many public welfare undertakings related to children's city culture and education. For example, she led the children's city walk and shared the local history and culture of Ningbo with children supported by video materials. In addition, Zhang Qianxi also organised a series of community public welfare workshops for children to participate in, through a variety of interesting forms, allowing children’s voices to be heard and to effectively participate in the construction of a child-friendly city. Zhang Qianxi's current research interests also include community education. She believes that the existing environmental resources, social resources and human resources in communities should be fully utilised to guide and cultivate more social organsations and explore more diversified non-commercial education models for children. From China's 14th Five-Year Plan to Ningbo's overall development plan, Zhang Qianxi felt that all levels are doing their best to promote child-friendly construction, which strengthened her determination to study the issue of child development. She feels proud to contribute to the construction of a local child-friendly city. Because of this, she and her teammates in the lab devote themselves to public welfare activities, motivated by their love for the subject.

At the end of the interview, Zhang again expressed her gratitude to the university. "UNNC has fully demonstrated its superiority as the first Sino-foreign cooperative university in China. I am deeply impressed by the openness, diversity, inclusive academic atmosphere and international perspective of the university. At the same time, UNNC is closely connected with the outside world. Whether it is government departments or major enterprises, the university actively builds bridges for students to communicate with them, encouraging students to go out of campus to participate in social practice and let us feel that gold will always shine. I would also like to thank the Education Foundation for providing students with scholarships and social practice grants to build platforms for students to develop in their extracurricular activities. In addition, the public welfare projects for children funded by the Foundation, such as supporting education in rural areas and building sports facilities for children in underdeveloped areas, fully reflect a high sense of social responsibility. I also want to thank President Yang Fujia, who personally donated the Dream Scholarship and encouraged us to develop actively in the extracurricular activities. He insisted that education should “ignite the fire in students’ hearts". In the experimental field of Liberal Arts Education at the university, I try my best to insist on my interest and protect my inner "fire" on the road of research. I wish more and more students are able to come to UNNC to find their passion and resolutely pursue their love."