REUSES After Bootcamp 2: Turning Soil Science into Tools for Classrooms and Municipalities

During the second SoilTribes bootcamp in Barcelona, REUSES took an important step forward. The project became clearer, more focused and easier to communicate.

The central question was no longer only: how can we physically unseal urban soils?

It became: how can scientific knowledge about urban sealed soils become useful for the people who can act on it?

This shift helped define a concrete grant-funded output: a dual-use knowledge product that translates Sara Di Lonardo’s research into accessible materials for two main audiences.

The first audience is educators and school communities. For them, REUSES can offer classroom-ready resources, outdoor learning activities, soil literacy prompts, worksheets and visual explainers. These materials can help students understand soil as living infrastructure connected to biodiversity, heat, water, climate adaptation and wellbeing.

The second audience is policymakers and municipalities. For them, REUSES can provide clear evidence, policy briefings, visual summaries, indicators and arguments showing why soil unsealing matters for public space, school greening, urban planning and climate adaptation.

One of the strongest ideas from Bootcamp 2 was that the same science should travel in two directions: into classroom practice and into public decision-making.

The bootcamp activities helped shape this direction. Through pitching, prototyping, “Three Voices”, visioning exercises, failure forecasting and backlog planning, the team moved from a broad challenge to a more practical and testable product. The group identified the need to translate scientific data into clear language, create tools for teachers, develop a policy-facing booklet, gather examples from similar projects and explore visual storytelling formats.

Several powerful messages emerged from the working canvases: “Every school should have a green space”; “Turning grey spaces to green is possible”; “Schools rooted in climate action”; and “Translate scientific data into civil language”. These ideas helped frame REUSES as both an educational and policy communication project.

The proposed knowledge product could include a guide to why urban sealed soils matter, soil literacy materials for schools, indoor and outdoor classroom activities, observation templates, policy briefs, evidence summaries, visual explainers and implementation pathways for schools and municipalities.

The bootcamp also clarified the risks to design around. Scientific content may remain too technical. Educators may lack time. Policy makers may not immediately see the relevance of soil. Visual communication may not be strong enough. To respond to these risks, the product needs to be modular, practical, visually accessible and directly linked to real concerns such as urban heat, biodiversity, public health, green infrastructure and school environments.

The next steps are now much clearer. The team needs to define the exact structure of the knowledge product, select the scientific findings to translate first, create one prototype classroom activity and one prototype policy page, gather feedback from educators and municipal actors, and use the SoilTribes platform to collect examples, references and case studies from the wider community.

Bootcamp 2 confirmed that REUSES is not yet a full urban intervention. Its next phase is something just as important: a usable knowledge product that can turn scientific research into shared action.

Classroom-ready. Policy-relevant. Visually accessible. Grounded in soil science.

That is the direction REUSES is now ready to take.