By Tiago Vilas Boas, Design Coordinator & Volunteer It was a rain-soaked day in Eindhoven. Away from the frenetic energy of the 2025 Dutch Design Week, inside a container we were designing the most fundamental of human journeys: the journey home. The Gaza Travel Agency (GTA) was a speculative design project, a space to imagine the return of Gazans to their ancestral homes. From October 18th to 26th, we invited visitors to step out of the debate and into a vision of return to

It’s a pleasant Sunday in Eindhoven. Dutch Design Week 2025 has started and people are strolling, walking, someone marching in the impossible task of seeing everything that is presented this year. The map listing all Dutch Design Week locations is overwhelming, every little corner hosts another exhibition, and one needs to decide in a second whether this place is worth their time and attention. With this mix of curiosity, tiredness, anticipation and skepticism people approach

Insights from our Interview with Mama Melta as illustrated by Mariastella Kamuti. In March, during Nairobi Design Week 2025, we set up our stand hoping to share what we’ve been doing with the Samia community around Lake Victoria. To our surprise, people didn’t just pass by, they stopped, listened, asked thoughtful questions, and shared their own stories about their experiences. Many were especially curious about how traditional knowledge could play a role in addressing today’

Mzee Edward Namuye from Busijo Village in the Samia community is a skilled artisan dedicated to traditional craftsmanship. At 76 years old,

Group picture after the workshop at Bumbe Cultural Centre. Photo by Obosh Pixels On 1st March 2025 , a unique and significant gathering took place at Bumbe Cultural Centre in Busia . It brought together elders and youth from the Samia community, providing a platform to bridge the intergenerational gap and revive traditional knowledge. This event, organized by Kenge Content Hive in collaboration with Design Reparations, a Netherlands-based organization advocating for climate j

On January 10th, 2025, Design Reparations partnered with Princess Abumbi Prudence from the Bafut Community in Cameroon. The presentation revealed an idea of design that is not just solving practical needs or being a vehicle of creativity, but as an ongoing conversation that transcends time. 

Ian Francis Onyango with the designers at the workshop during Dutch Design Week. Photo by Cecilia Scolaro This article emerges from an ongoing conversation between Cecilia and Tiago, founder of Design Reparations, about their shared experiences at Dutch Design Week (DDW). In the midst of the event’s fast-paced innovation and speculation about the future, they found themselves drawn to a different kind of inquiry—one rooted in the past, in the knowledge of ancestors, and in th