A social design experience: bamboo lanterns development in university and local community realm

Abstract

Environmental degradation and global social inequality, demand an education to transform values and practices in today's world. Bamboo, as a plant and material, has mitigated the impacts of climate change. When it is combined with design within a bamboo productive chain, it enhances the possibility of a pedagogical dimension for design students, together with local communities’ participation. This study aims to examine how social design can collaborate in education for sustainability involving researcher’s participant observation and co-creation, which resulted in the Take Akari Bamboo Lantern Workshop, held at the Unesp Campus in Bauru/SP. The results show that social design combined with bamboo helps, due to the collaborative and collective ways of working, in motivating people to internalize and carry out new practices, capable of changing beliefs, values and transform scenarios.