A Catalogue of Cryptids

Fostering Environmental Awareness through Cryptozoology

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6239-760-6_22How to use a DOI?

Keywords

culture-led urban regeneration; cultural sustainability; environmental awareness

Abstract

Contemporary urbanism increasingly shifts away from top-down, capital-driven infrastructure projects toward bottom-up, culture-led urban regeneration. This paper explores the symbiotic relationship between culture-led regeneration and Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), proposing that culturally driven, participatory placemaking can transform cities into living classrooms that foster long-term sustainability literacy. To illustrate this paradigm in practice, the paper introduces transSCAPE: Cultural Spaces of Knowledge, a transdisciplinary research and transfer project based at the Otto-von-Guericke-University Magdeburg. Funded by the German Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space (BMFTR), transSCAPE works to regenerate Magdeburg’s defunct trading port into a socially inclusive, multifunctional knowledge space (lieu de savoir). Specifically, this study examines an exemplary multi-tiered outdoor workshop series for secondary school students titled A Catalogue of Cryptids: Exploring the Harbor through Cryptozoology. Utilizing Daniela Conti and Richard Dawson’s Real World Learning (RWL) model, the workshop leverages the engaging, low-threshold theme of cryptozoology alongside documentary photography and creative writing to anchor students emotionally and physically to their local geography. By contributing their creative outputs to a permanent, gamified knowledge-parcours, the young participants actively transition from passive consumers of space to empowered co-creators of their urban environment.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Max Jokschus
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/08/23
TI  - A Catalogue of Cryptids
BT  - Proceedings of the Conference of Growing up the Future: Education for Sustainability (GROUFES 2026)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 255
EP  - 262
SN  - 2667-128X
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6239-760-6_22
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6239-760-6_22
ID  - Jokschus2026
ER  -