Desinc Live | Designing and Learning in the Context of Migration

Designing and Learning in the Context of Migration

A project experimenting innovative teaching and learning forms, as a key factor in the production of more inclusive cities

Photo by Daniel Funes Fuentes on Unsplash

The context

The challenge of inclusion of third country nationals, asylum seekers and refugees in European cities touches several areas, including education and training. These persons tend to encounter obstacles in the recognition of skills and must divide themselves between various integration domains, from housing to employment to social ties.

In this context, the planning of cities and the design of inclusive and appropriate urban spaces and services appears to be a key issue.

The project

DESINC LIVE – Designing and Learning in the Context of Migration is a project that recognises the decisive role played by new forms of teaching and learning in the development of new skills, towards the production of more inclusive cities.

The basis of the work is a framework of principles, methods and pedagogical tools, developed by the previous DESINC project, that the new “live” project is now testing within a structured training programme.

Aims

A new educational offer

Designing, testing and formalising an innovative educational offer for architecture, urban design and urban planning students

To promote renewed perspectives on city-making, while encouraging social awareness, responsibility and criticality into the mainstream teaching of the abovementioned subjects.

Engagement and participation

Promoting the participation of displaced persons and civil society organisations (CSOs) in the formulation of new pedagogies

To build up an articulated set of narratives about the city, its social changes and the challenge of inclusion, as well as enhancing the capacity of participants to envision longer-term scenarios for urban transformation, beyond the most immediate needs.

Skills development

Enabling a further development of skills and competences by higher education teachers and trainers

To allow a renewal in representation forms, tools and methods, that are important for tackling complex societal changes in the urban context, as well as for reinforcing their capacity to contribute to a transversal debate about the inclusive city.

Audiences

Students in architecture, urban design and urban planning

who are interested in acquiring new competences, social skills and more awareness of how inclusive urban spaces work and are produced

Educators in architecture, urban design and urban planning

who can benefit from new narratives, representations and approaches to knowledge on complex societal changes, in support of curricula innovation and transdisciplinary thinking

CSOs supporting the inclusion of displaced persons

who, as well as displaced people themselves, can provide grounded narratives about the social production of urban space and enhance their capacity to envision scenarios