“La mia Scuola è Differente! - Azione Scuola 2.0” and “EQUI 0-6” projects apply the methodology of participatory design as a tool to involve stakeholders of educational spaces in finding solutions to shared problems. Co-design implements design tools to activate interaction between the participants to make the educational offer more connected to the educating community through the redesign of shared spaces. The projects aim to create beautiful and sustainable educational spaces together!
Local
Italy
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Mainly urban
It refers to other types of transformations (soft investment)
No
No
Yes
As a representative of an organization, in partnership with other organisations
Name of the organisation(s): Politecnico di Milano Type of organisation: University or another research institution First name of representative: Laura Last name of representative: Galluzzo Gender: Female Nationality: Italy Function: Researcher-Assistant Professor Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Via Durando, 10 Town: Milano Postal code: 20158 Country: Italy Direct Tel:+39 349 691 9531 E-mail:laura.galluzzo@polimi.it Website:https://www.desis.polimi.it/
Presently schools are more than just a place for children to develop; they are a social stronghold, a gathering place for families, and a chance to be social. In this scenario, the design discipline plays a proactive role, proposing specific research methodologies and intervention strategies in close relationship with the educational services actors, building new competencies, creating original synergies, functions, spaces and general inclusion processes and social innovation. One of these is the application of participatory design actions with the educating community, which guides the different parties together in defining a mutually valuable outcome. These methodologies provide productive co-creation tools to harness the creativity of users and other stakeholders, collecting tangible artefacts built by them and harnessing their engagement as full participants in the design of educational services.
We are applying these processes in two projects, which we present as a representative output of an applied design-oriented methodology. In 2019, was launched the “La Mia Scuola è Differente!” project and through the “Scuola 2.0” action, were implemented participatory design paths to make the educational offer more connected to the educating community through the redevelopment of shared spaces in four partner schools in the cities of Milan, Turin and Padua. However, the “EQUI 0-6” project, which started in March 2022 and is currently ongoing, aims to promote equity and quality in childcare services by formulating guidelines for implementing Integrated Poles 0-6. The objective is to unify crèches and kindergartens to share services, spaces and resources through the participatory redesign of some spaces of a selected Educational Unit in Milan. Research focus on the possibilities to realise new educational space through co-designing activities with the educating community and to elaborate guidelines and orientations for possible future replicability and dissemination.
Educating Communities
Participatory Design
Design for Social Innovation
Educational Spaces
Territorial Poles for Children 0-6
The projects “La mia Scuola è Differente! - Azione Scuola 2.0” and “EQUI 0-6” work in particular on the segment of social sustainability, fostering value creation within the target educational communities. Schools are a space for gathering and a place of lifelong education, not only for children, but also for the community. Schools should open up more and more, allowing the educational space to be used even during school hours by citizens. Outdoor spaces have great potential as a bridge between indoor and outdoor space.
The more the community is involved around these places, the more attention and care will be given to the education of the next generations. Schools should therefore be places of aggregation, cultural and social places at the centre of our neighbourhoods, promoting sharing and support. Through these projects, we want to start up experiments that can initiate networking processes and relations between actors active in the reference territories. The final objective of these projects is the drafting of guidelines for the replicability and scalability of the experiences in other contexts.
The projects “La mia Scuola è Differente! - Azione Scuola 2.0” and “EQUI 0-6” through prototyping activities with different materials, aim to make educational spaces more functional but also more beautiful. The role of spatial elements in learning is fundamental. Space is educational: Loris Malaguzzi defines space as the 'third educator'. Space must therefore be organised according to the needs of children and educators, with respect to everyday activities, but it must return a high quality of experience to the child's eyes. Usually, our co-design process with children, educators and parents opens with an observation workshop, in which we map the situation of the educational spaces both from the point of view of furniture and organisation, but above all of the actions and activities that take place there. This allows us to understand the gaps of design opportunity in which we can insert our design. Interventions in the space aim to make the experience unique, rich and educational through the aesthetic quality of the co-designed and furnished spaces. In mapping the activities within the space, another parameter we consider are the emotions that users feel in that space. This allows us to understand the motivations linked to the different types of emotions and how we can intervene to ensure more positive emotions in all educational spaces.
Educational services, in particular 0-6 services, fulfil multiple functions:
(a) family-work reconciliation, fundamental for female employment;
b) educational, cognitive and relational training, partly compensating for inequalities linked to family background;
c) of social protection, especially in the most deprived neighbourhoods, representing a precious chance of social integration for vulnerable families.
These functions are all central in the Italian context, which suffers from high child poverty, high heredity of social exclusion, high educational poverty, low female employment, family overload.
These projects were an opportunity to reflect on various issues, in particular on the importance of space - inside and outside - in school buildings, involving the educating and parental community during the brainstorming and design phase; and, consequently, to set up new project models to prevent social exclusion by building a solid synergy between school, territory and families.
Participatory activities usually involve, at first, parents and local actors already active in social activities, but thanks to the repetitiveness of the workshops and the involved power of the proposed activities usually, other groups of parents and local actors join in the co-design workshops. This phenomenon allows us to involve even those who are usually more reluctant and to activate new relationships within the school services and with local actors. Voluntary participation is one of the core values for successful participatory activities and ensures the durability and cohesion of the working group. This phenomenon also has a strong impact on the inclusiveness of all those individuals who usually do not have the opportunity to be involved in social activities with different actors in the educational community.
These projects made it possible to establish our participatory design model by interacting with different actors, entities within the project but also outside where needs were not met. Obviously, there was a very high level of participation, which becomes a strong point in our favour, precisely in terms of designing spaces for different users (educators - children - families) and leaving them with the long-term care of both an applied interdisciplinary model and in establishing new personal and community relations without barriers.
The effects of co-design will be direct for the children who attend these services, and for their families, but positive implications will be produced on a larger scale for the children who will attend the services in the future and who will be able to count on a more effective integration of the educational spaces. The educating community of the area selected for co-design will benefit both directly from the reflexive potential triggered by involvement in the co-design process, and from the greater integration and educational continuity that the school intends to pursue with all the subjects that in various capacities work for the education, care and equal opportunities of children.
The territory where the schools in which we have worked for the experimentation are located and the population living there will benefit from an avant-garde reflection and planning concerning the integration of 0-6 services or new innovative educational spaces.
The path of analysis, preparation and co-designing of these educational spaces favours the strengthening of local networks and the educating community and the awareness of users and citizenship regarding the dimension of the educational services offered by the area.
In perspective, the educational poles promote equity and quality of services and constitute multifunctional social garrisons, places where citizenship can be experienced and acted upon from an early age.
The two projects arise from the collaboration of a very rich partnership.
The “La mia Scuola è Differente - Scuola 2.0” project consists of a dense network of actors in three territories: Milan, Padua and Turin. The partnership thus consists of numerous public and private actors (schools, municipalities, cooperatives, universities) and transversal partners such as associations, foundations and universities. DIAPASON COOPERATIVA SOCIALE a r. l. onlus is the project leader.
The “EQUI 0-6” project mobilises different competencies to deepen different aspects of the 0-6 service system. The partnership consists of three departments of the Politecnico di Milano (Architecture and Urban Studies, Management Engineering and Design) and five project partners. The DAStU group is made up of sociologists and urban planners who read services in their policy, social and spatial dimensions; the DIG group emphasises organisational processes; DESIGN addresses the issue of space design at the micro level; INDIRE, GNNI and the Municipality of Milan oversee the pedagogical-educational dimension; Save the Children provides data and fundamental knowledge on educational poverty. From the point of view of the heterogeneity of the 0-6 system, the Municipality of Milan and Legacoop Lombardia represent the point of view, dynamics, the approaches of the public and the private social sector, respectively. A plurality of outlooks makes it possible to address the complexity and multidimensionality that characterise childcare services.
The municipalities of the cities of Milan, Turin and Padua participated in these projects by bringing detailed knowledge of the system of public education services and useful data on their characteristics. The municipalities contributed as curators of the pedagogical dimension in the participatory workshops, thus supporting the Department of Design in the participatory design process on the topics of organisation, service definition and management, and technological aspects. Finally, they contributed to the dissemination and communication activities of the research results through their own communication channels.
Project partners such as INDIRE, GNNI and Save the Children brought their contribution on the pedagogical sphere by supporting the design of co-design activities. Their presence was very useful in designing activities with pedagogical-educational purposes that were coherent and correct for the target users we were referring to.
And finally, the various departments of the Politecnico di Milano contributed their expertise and skills by developing different project phases and processes, but integrating them in order to return a complete analysis and design of the experience.
Our approach to the user can be defined as a philosophy that puts the user in the center of the development process. The main meaning of the focus on the user is the use of techniques and methods that seek to bring users into the design process in order to create spaces that are appropriate and match to the real needs of the people, besides also following the good usability practices. The best way to understand the work is to talk to people in their actual work environment.
Together designers and participants create a shared understanding of work practice that reveals opportunities and problems that occur in the spaces used:
1. The user is the expert: we recognise that in the area of personal experience and work, users are the experts. As such users must act as informants in their relationship with designers.
2. Sharing control during the inquiry: the designer must deliberately let go of control and create a situation that allows users to share control.
3. Reflection and engagement: maintain a conversation that allows users and the designer to reflect on, question, and create a shared meaning about the work experience.
This approach allows you to get inside school spaces and try to design them with people who actually use them every day. Educational spaces are very often designed beforehand, sometimes even by people who do not have the right skills to understand how best to organise and furnish spaces. Educators, children and parents are the primary users of these spaces and should therefore be the ones who have the most important role in the design. In the participatory approach, the user is not only at the centre, but he is the expert, the one who makes his personal experience and needs available to the designers, who have the tools and skills to translate them into experiences, services, and product systems for the users.
Starting from the results of the analysis and mapping part of the educational services in the territories of reference, participatory planning actions were initiated through workshops aimed at defining the spatial organisation, definition and management of the service, and technological aspects. The connection with the pedagogical-educational dimension was pursued, thanks to the participation of the municipalities and the project partners of the partnership. The school-city relationship in its social and spatial implications was the key to reflecting on possible benefits, especially in vulnerable contexts.
The introductory workshop focused on identifying the actors involved, in the definition and cohesion of the working group participating in the co-design activities, through some teambuilding activities. The group may consist of children, parents, educators, service managers, local associations, neighbourhood associations, and bodies present and active in the area to foster synergy and relations between school-neighbourhood-city, pedagogues of the project partners. Co-design activities are divided into three phases:
Observation: Analysis of the uses and practices of the users of the space, mapping through a user journey the future development points to build personas profiles of the future users.
Inspiration: identification of a specific area of the school that could be redesigned; a preliminary analysis of best practices and case studies; the definition, in relation to the services offered and the uses previously observed, of a spatial layout.
Implementation and prototyping on different scales. Starting from the outputs of the second phase, models and materialboards will be created to define visual and tactile elements useful for the choice of materials, finishes, and furnishings, and for the prototyping of the space on a 1:1 scale (simulation of the project through low budget) to allow greater interaction between the environment and the user.
Social innovation can be seen as a process of change that emerges from the creative re-combination of existing assets (social capital, historical heritage, traditional craftsmanship, accessible advanced technology) and that aims to achieve socially relevant goals in new ways. A coordinated set of supporting actions aimed at making social innovation practices more effective, impactful, sustainable and meaningful.
The design for social innovation applied by the Polimi Desis Lab uses design processes that involve users and stakeholders in finding solutions to shared problems. These are activities that require interaction on the part of the participants called upon to use design tools. Co-design activities make it possible to: detect needs, obtain insights, generate and develop ideas, inform and suggest, involve and activate parties.
Our approach refers to Human-Centered Design that is a creative approach to problem solving. It's a process that starts with the people you are designing for and ends with new solutions that are tailor-made to suit their needs. Human-centered design is all about building a deep empathy with the people you are designing for; generating tons of ideas; building a bunch of prototypes; sharing what you've made with the people you're designing for; and eventually putting your innovative new solution out in the world. (ideo.org). We like to call our approach design with people and not design for people. Users are the element at the centre of design and part of design itself.
Referring to the goals of Agenda 2030, there are several points that these projects want to address. First and foremost is certainly point 4 'Quality Education', specifically addressing the issue of the quality of educational spaces. The role of spatial elements in learning is fundamental. Space is educational: Loris Malaguzzi defines space as the 'third educator'. Hence the importance not only of the spatial qualities of the environments that host educational services, but more broadly the relationship with the living environment, which makes it crucial, in the urban sphere, to set the goal of creating child-friendly cities. It therefore becomes necessary to co-design educational spaces by following and listening to the needs of those who live and inhabit them every day, modifying them over time as needs change.
The other two very important points that these two projects address in a parallel and joint manner are point 1 'Overcoming poverty' and point 5 'Gender equality'. The educational services, especially the 0-6 services fulfil multiple functions such as family-work reconciliation, which is fundamental for female employment; educational function, cognitive and relational training, partly compensating for inequalities linked to family background and social protection, especially in the most deprived neighbourhoods, representing a precious chance of social integration for vulnerable families. These functions are all central in the Italian context, which suffers from high child poverty, high heredity of social exclusion, high educational poverty, low female employment, family overload. And finally, another fundamental point touched upon is point 11 'Sustainable cities and communities'. The projects are intended to create spatial and organisational frameworks within which existing services and new structures can be brought together, based precisely on educational continuity and the relationship with the educating community.
The project “La mia Scuola è Differente!” with the action “Scuola 2.0” came to an end in December 2022, after its launch in February 2019. Five schools in Turin, Milan and Padua were involved in this project, where we worked on different levels of prototyping and implementing the space. In Turin, the courtyard of a primary school was redesigned (May 2022). In the two Milan primary schools involved, corridors and two spaces for psychomotricity and creativity were redesigned (October-December 2022). In Padua, co-design applied the definition of tools for managing an outdoor space shared by the school with the local community (September 2022).
The 'EQUI 0-6' project is a research project that started in March 2022 and will end in May 2023. The research takes place on three scales:
1. WP1 (March 2022-May 2022): fine-grained thematic mapping of 0-6 services in the city of Milan, to return the geography of the services offered on the territory.
2. WP2 (June 2022-November 2022): qualitative analysis in one or more Educational Units, with a twofold focus 1) to bring out the areas of attention for the implementation of the integrated 0-6 system, in support of an effective design and coordination between the childcare services (0-2 and 3-5), aimed at fostering educational continuity between them, with the primary school and with the educating community; 2) to identify opportunities and any innovations that have emerged, also during the pandemic, with respect to space management, work organisation, communication, integration between services and school cycles.
3. WP3 (December 2022-April 2023): starting from the results of WP1 and WP2, participatory planning actions will be triggered through workshops (WSP) aimed at defining the spatial organisation, definition and management of the service. The connection with the pedagogical-educational dimension will be pursued, thanks to the active participation of the project partners.
