Final presentation of the artists Bram Dewolfs' results of his residency

During my residency here at Medialab Prado, I had the great opportunity to meet a range of inspiring cultural mediators and collaborators. It was thanks to their input and feedback that my project evolved in the way it did. I started out not 100% knowing what I wanted to develop as for me projects are always a dialogue between different people and organizations. I had a few options that I wanted to develop one way or another. After talking to Silvia Teixeira López about her project Satélites DIY: Estudiemos la Atmósfera de Madrid, an idea started to form. As I liked the way Silvia approached the theme, through co-creation & science, I decided to link my experience as a teacher and educational innovator to this particular theme. During my residency I would focus on creating an attractive, fun and engaging toolkit/learning cycle to work with young people and air quality and pollution. 

The starting point of my thought process was that of the deconstruction of the concept Air Pollution. Unfortunately and most likely because of overall invisibility of the problem, sensitizing people about the matters is still a very difficult matter. We all have heard the word at one point, in the news, or in articles...but:

What exactly is air pollution?
Where does it come from?
What are the different substances in this (almost) invisible matter?
How do we measure it? And when do we know it is good, medium, bad or catastrophic air quality?

And how on earth can we inform, involve and sensitize our children about these matters? 

Could it be even possible to get them to take a critical, informed stance towards air pollution and climate change? And even be positive catalysts to create a societal change? And is there a way to teach the teachers on how to work with these matters with young people?

What are the problems with air pollution besides the fact that it’s an invisible killer?

Why don’t we learn more about it at school? How do we engage young people? And how do we give air pollution a face?

All this and more were questions that were popping in my mind and I somehow wanted to answer with my project.

Every time when I have my first conversation (at the start of the new school year) with my students, I ask them about their expectations concerning my classes and the learning process. Every September 1st, already for twenty years, I’ve been asking these same questions. They always answer my question: “What do you expect from this course”, with the following answers: “We want to learn and we want it to be fun.”

This is what I take with me as a teacher but also as an urban innovator, placemaker and designer of processes & tools. So it goes without saying that during my time in Medialab-Prado I was going to do exactly that. Design something that sparks joy and curiosity.

On the one hand I have focussed on building a plan for educators & youth workers to work on air quality & air pollution. It needed to be a plan where there would be space for flexibility, creativity and they would have different options to choose from.

The methodology is based on my stay here in Madrid. In the neighborhood of the lab, around lunchtime I witnessed a remarkable and captivating ritual. People would stroll around the streets filled with tavernas and restaurants to check the daily menu of the different places, the Menu del Dia. Comparing them, reflecting on what they wanted and afterwards making a decision to their gastronomic mood of that particular day.

So that’s what I did. I created a Menu del Dia for educators. One that is based on a learning cycle. They can choose a first course (Initial Situational Analysis or Introduction), main dish (Reflection in Action) and dessert (Output & Dissemination). If they’re very hungry they can even opt for extra side dishes (parallel and ongoing activities) to eat along their different courses.

Next to this I developed more in detail a tool that can be used in different phases or alongside the learning cycle. Namely a trading card game with monsters, called Air Monsters. Hereby every, often invisible, pollutant gets a face & a name. Every pollutant is a specific monster and every monster card features an explanation on the toxic aspects (description), their consequences (crime) and where and how they are created (cause). All the monsters also have different values (Health Impact-Strength-Intelligence-Speed) and Elements (fire, rain, air, earth) that were included to ensure playability and even the extension/creation of new game activities. For now I’ve designed the cards and used the English text, the next few months I will also create a Spanish and Dutch version of the game, to enable more inclusivity.