#1051: Stories, Futures and Histories: Co-design Routines to Center Community Knowledge for Environmental Education in India

Centering co-design as a site of social justice, we analyze a collaboration between learning scientists and local teachers from a non-profit organization in the Himalayan region of Uttarakhand, India. We ask, what design routines support the emergence of community-driven ideas for ecological education, and how do they build on each other to deepen cultural, imaginative, and historical engagement? Data for this paper comes from the initial phase of collaboration, which consisted of six online meetings, each two hour long. We conducted thematic analysis along to identify three interconnected routines: (i) autecology narratives surfaced ecological connections grounded in community and personal rituals, (ii) speculative futuring opened imaginative engagement with communication, technology, and markets; and (iii) interactions with community elders supported the development of critical historicity. Together, these routines illustrate a co-design approach which fosters collective sense-making integrating cultural, imaginative, and historical dimensions of community life.