Zero is an initiative launched by Marcelo Coelho & Jb Labrune, two researchers & designers who love creativity, making and playful learning for all. Based on the observation that traditional education institutions and alternative systems (montessori, freinet, waldorf or makerspaces, fablabs) often require consequent investments + facilities, they started imagining minimalist constructionist design environments bootstrapped from the ground up – from zero – in order to learn with nature, through design.

The Zero initiative aims at inventing and experimenting new design activities using very minimal resources. How would you build a pencil, a chair, a well, a website, a kiln, a computer or a house without abundance of materials and tools ? How would you do it while respecting situated knowledge & ecologies, inviting communities and biomes at the heart of it ?

Zero aims at providing documentation methods and infrastructure to children and non-experts so they can develop their own learning approaches, share their own knowledge and nurture their own cultures and environment. It is indeed very different to bootstrap a design workshop in a favela in Rio, in a yurt in the Gobi desert, in a settlement in Odisha, in the streets of Parisian suburb, on a boat in Shanghai or from a design school in Boston.

Inspired by Hackerspaces, DIY design culture, Project Zero at Harvard Graduate School of Education, Reggio Emilia approach, High-Low Tech,  Barefoot College, and Internet0 at MIT Center for Bits and Atoms, the Zero initiative intends to :

• facilitate the organisation of informal design learning activities around the world using minimal resources & respectful of the environment
• share creative patterns and experiences through distributed networks built and operated by them
• assist a global community of diverse people who own their infrastructures and celebrate their unique learning languages

eventually conjugating them through various events & media, constituting progressively a vast repertoire to be mutualized in a symbiotic way.

Join the project and see more references on our Wiki