Bamboo Lantern Festival - A Social Design Experience Integrating the University and the Local Community

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