MusEdu is a project that aims to promote inclusive Early Childhood Education and Care for an inclusive future.It seeks to strengthen collaboration between kindergartens and museums to foster creativity, sustainability, and active citizenship among preschoolers through art-based approaches, systems thinking, and design thinking. The project is a collaboration between partners in Italy, Finland, Norway, and Romania.
This project is funded by Erasmus+ funding from the European Union, 2025-1-FI01-KA220-SCH-000351989 cooperation partnerships in school education.
How can Systems Oriented Design help in designing for inclusion in complex systems?
At its core, MusEdu operates within complex, interconnected systems to address the unequal access of preschool children to cultural and educational experiences as an inherently wicked problem. This challenge manifests differently across each participating country. In Norway and Italy, increasing migration highlights the need to include children from refugee and immigrant backgrounds who may face linguistic and cultural barriers. In Finland, inclusion is shaped by geographical remoteness and the need to engage Indigenous communities, where access to cultural institutions and resources is uneven. In Romania, rural isolation and socio-economic inequalities limit both access to early childhood education and opportunities for cultural participation. Across all contexts, these challenges are reinforced by structural barriers, including limited access to resources, weak collaboration between educational and cultural institutions, and unequal opportunities for participation. MusEdu therefore operates across these interconnected conditions to expand equitable access to and participation in cultural and educational experiences for preschool children.
Thus, the proposed interventions must operate across multiple scales, addressing both immediate problems and long-term structural challenges. To do so, MusEdu adopts Systems Oriented Design approach, which frames inclusion as part of interconnected and dynamic systems rather than an isolated issue. SOD shifts attention from individual elements to the relationships, connections, and systemic conditions that shape access and participation, enabling a more comprehensive understanding of inclusion.
Its core method, gigamapping, supports participatory sense-making by visualising complex systems across scales, actors, and domains. By integrating diverse forms of knowledge and perspectives, it reveals interdependencies and systemic barriers, enabling the challenge of inclusion to be reframed and acted upon through targeted interventions.
More information about the project:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/musedu_early_childhood_education/about/?viewAsMember=true
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/__musedu__/
The project partners:
Finland:
University of Lapland, www.ulapland.fi
City of Rovaniemi/ Rovaniemi Art Museum, www.rovaniemi.fi
Norway:
Oslo School of Architecture and Design, www.aho.no
MiA- Museene i Akershus, https://mia.no/
Italy:
PACO DESIGN COLLABORATIVE, www.pacollaborative.com
SCUOLA DELL’INFANZIA PARITARIA “MARIA BAMBINA”,
https://www.scuolainfanziamariabambina.com/
Romania:
Asociatia All Grow, https://www.allgrowromania.org/
Episcop Dionisie Romano Secondary School