What does it mean to belong in a world where identities are fluid, homes are layered, and borders, both visible and invisible, shape how we move, live, and connect? The project Redesign Belonging by What Design Can Do and its partners, explores how creativity can nurture connection across cultures, histories, and lived experiences. It asks how we can create spaces, both physical and emotional, where everyone feels seen, safe, and heard. From street corners to shared memories, from personal rituals to collective futures, we asked ourselves how can we reimagine belonging not as a place, but as a practice.
The Redesign Belonging Challenge aimed to foster solidarity and a sense of belonging among migrant women who have been living in European countries for more than five years. By bringing together immigrant women, design enthusiasts, and professional designers, the project developed design-driven models and solutions for integration, tailored to different EU contexts.
The outcome of this challenge presents five winning initiatives from the challenge, each offering bold, imaginative ways to create a sense of home, especially for migrant women navigating new environments. From storytelling to shared meals, craft to digital platforms, these projects highlight how small, human-centered interventions can make a lasting impact.
Homelore – Riddhi Varma
Homelore operates at the intersection of craft, culture, and critical practice. Using textile arts such as embroidery, stitching, and dyeing, it treats craft not just as technique but as a language to investigate migration. By collaborating directly with diaspora artisans, Homelore reframes culture as fluid and evolving, moving beyond static or colonial narratives.
Through co-creation projects, shared making becomes a methodology for inquiry, where every stitch, weave, and dye acts as a dialogue about identity, place, and belonging. The resulting works are not merely artifacts, they are embodied research, telling stories through the hands of those who live them.
Unwritten Recipes – Nazlı Meriç Çukurova
Unwritten Recipes is a participatory design and social art project that uses food to explore migration, memory, adaptation, and belonging. For migrant women, cooking familiar dishes in a new country involves subtle transformations; ingredients change, tools differ, flavors shift, mirroring how we adapt and recreate “home.”
In Tilburg Noord, the Netherlands, women from diverse generations and backgrounds participate in co-creation workshops, cooking together, sharing memories, and documenting the evolving recipes through text, drawings, photography, and gestures. The project culminates in a public pop-up tasting event, turning food into a shared language of belonging and celebrating the creativity and emotional labor of migrant women.
You Too Are a Wanderer – Carla Sanfratello Marco
You Too Are a Wanderer is an artistic research project exploring migration through myth-making and storytelling. Participatory workshops encourage migrants and non-migrants to exchange stories, sounds, and drawings, creating the myth of The Wanderer. The project culminates in an immersive installation, offering new perspectives on migrant identity and creating a space for empathy, exchange, and belonging.
Winadill Project – Tamara Mezina & Clarissa Soares
The Winadill Project is a digital platform connecting migrant women with local communities through freelance services such as baking, babysitting, photography, and more. Co-created through research and workshops, the platform fosters social connections, economic empowerment, and inclusion. Its design allows migrant women to contribute their skills, building both visibility and opportunity across diverse audiences.
Home? Belonging Short Stories – Sarah Binkowski
‘Home? Belonging Short Stories’ addresses exclusion and stereotyping faced by migrant youth in Bolzano, Italy. Through ethnographic diaries, the “Real Talk” game, and a citywide poster campaign, the project provides tools for self-expression, reflection, and dialogue. It also integrates into teacher workshops to foster understanding in diverse classrooms, helping to reshape societal narratives and encourage mutual empathy.
The Redesign Belonging challenge was developed in collaboration with Laurea University, the Euro-Arab Foundation, and Educational Centre Visio, and co-funded by the European Union’s Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values Programme (CERV).
Join us for the final online showcase of the Redesign Belonging Creative Collective, a challenge exploring how design and co-creation can strengthen belonging across European communities. Discover the latest from these inspiring projects, hear directly from the designers, and share your own reflections on what it truly means to belong. Thursday October 30, 15.00 – 16.00 CET. Register here.