Atlas for Spatial Education and Environmental Narratives

Objective

SEEN-ATLAS (Atlas for Spatial Education and Environmental Narratives) tackles the challenge of long-term, low-intensity environmental risks such as PFAS contamination, known as “forever chemicals”. These substances are widespread in European waters and difficult for citizens to perceive, yet they represent a major public health and governance concern. Current education focuses on acute disasters, leaving chronic and invisible exposures largely unattended. SEEN-ATLAS fills this gap by developing and testing a participatory model of environmental education that empowers children, teachers, and communities to co-produce knowledge, strengthen resilience, and build trust in risk governance. The project pursues three objectives: (1) provide European institutions with qualitative evidence on how residents experience invisible risks, complementing existing monitoring; (2) improve awareness among children and communities through participatory workshops and symbolic tools such as a non-competitive board and card game; (3) co-develop an open-access educational toolkit and narrative atlas with schools and NGOs, ensuring replicability across Europe. To achieve these goals, SEEN-ATLAS combines comparative research and applied innovation. Learning Case Studies in Fukushima (Japan) and La Hague (France) analyse how nuclear risks have been communicated and contested. Building on this, two Application Case Studies in the Netherlands will run participatory workshops in schools using participatory methods. These activities will generate children’s narratives of safe and unsafe places, which will inform the main output, a board game.Outputs will be piloted in an International Baccalaureate school and a local school in Overijssel, and released in open access to maximise impact. The project aligns with Horizon Europe priorities on resilience, environmental justice, and citizen engagement.By embedding participation in education, it contributes to the EU Green Deal, the One Health agenda.