Abstract
This paper presents the ROOTS Project, developed by interdisciplinary student teams from Esade, UPC, and IED within Fusion Point's Challenge-Based Innovation framework, in collaboration with IdeaSquare at CERN. As part of a challenge proposed by IDAEA-CSIC (Spain) and the Sankandi Youth Development Association (SYDA, The Gambia), students co-designed low-cost environmental monitoring tools to support community-led mangrove restoration in the River Gambia region. A two-week field deployment in Sankandi embedded the project within a layered local governance structure (the Alkalo, the Village Development Committee, and its Environmental Committee) through which the technology was formally adopted and transferred. Drawing on student reflections and stakeholder feedback, the paper analyses how learners developed public design competencies including empathy, systems thinking, and collaborative reflexivity, illustrating how challenge-based, community-engaged education can operate as a situated public design practice within, rather than beyond, institutional governance structures.
Keywords
public design education; experiential learning; challenge-based learning; interdisciplinary education; community-based design; situated pedagogy; plural epistemologies; sustainability
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.2519
Citation
Sierra, M., Ramos, J., and Bragos, R. (2026) Learning to Design with Communities: Situated Public Design Education through the ROOTS Project in The Gambia, in Simeone, L., Gray, C. M., Verhoeven, A., de Götzen, A., Bakırlıoğlu, Y., Zohar, H., Stead, M., and Buwert, P. (eds.), DRS2026: Edinburgh, 8–12 June, Edinburgh, United Kingdom. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.2519
Creative Commons License
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Included in
Learning to Design with Communities: Situated Public Design Education through the ROOTS Project in The Gambia
This paper presents the ROOTS Project, developed by interdisciplinary student teams from Esade, UPC, and IED within Fusion Point's Challenge-Based Innovation framework, in collaboration with IdeaSquare at CERN. As part of a challenge proposed by IDAEA-CSIC (Spain) and the Sankandi Youth Development Association (SYDA, The Gambia), students co-designed low-cost environmental monitoring tools to support community-led mangrove restoration in the River Gambia region. A two-week field deployment in Sankandi embedded the project within a layered local governance structure (the Alkalo, the Village Development Committee, and its Environmental Committee) through which the technology was formally adopted and transferred. Drawing on student reflections and stakeholder feedback, the paper analyses how learners developed public design competencies including empathy, systems thinking, and collaborative reflexivity, illustrating how challenge-based, community-engaged education can operate as a situated public design practice within, rather than beyond, institutional governance structures.