The paper is centered on a social innovation design project which is being developed in the village of Azaruja, in the southeast of Portugal. The objective is to build a co-creative action with the local people, anchored on a local natural resource -cork -which is peeled from the cork oaks that characterize the place landscape. This project is focused on the labour activities related with cork that define the people and the place, which is understood in the present investigation in all its complexity, combining human, biophysical, geographical, economic, political, social, cultural, historical and ecological dimensions. The paper begins with Hannah Arendt's vita activa concept, which is crucial in distinguishing between the notions of labour, work and action. This is followed by some considerations about design anthropology in order to understand the methodology used in the co-creation process. Finally, the case study is described and examined its co-design methods.

The project Up Start - Creative Industries is an initiative of the Aga Khan Foundation in partnership with the University of Évora and promoted by the Portugal Social Innovation program, focusing a particular synergy based in the areas of design for social innovation, heritage, and management. Its main objective is the development of an alternative economic model of socio-cultural innovation and creative practices with disadvantaged citizens. It aims to increase the participants income and improve the living conditions of the communities involved, namely migrant populations from the Lisbon metropolitan area, through the identification and mapping of techniques, arts and crafts developed by migrants from their cultural heritage.

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What kind of art and design practice can be developed to boost the social and cultural inclusion of newly arrived immigrants and refugees to their new places of residence? Is there something the host society can do to involve artists, designers, stakeholders, and citizens to support these vulnerable new fellow citizens, to help them feel more confident with their new lives and promote their emancipation? With this and other questions in mind, we decided to develop a hybrid art and design participatory project with immigrant and refugee communities, which took place in the summer of 2019, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa (US). The political situation of the US, which was at the moment somehow hostile to new immigrants, was the perfect context for our project to make a strong statement. The article starts by contextualizing the project in sociological terms, as well as arguing about this hybrid practice field of participatory art and design, specifically through some paradigmatic case studies. We also focus on other topics that are central to our practice, such as the domain of participation and creative thinking, as well as the importance of strategically considering each part of the project as a specific mechanism. In a more conceptual approach, we also focus on the migrants' overwhelming situation, inspired by Paulo Freire´s "Pedagogy of the Oppressed," where he advocates the development of a "praxis" to liberate both the oppressed and the oppressors and promote a righteous society. Following is a description of the methodology used for the interaction with the participants, namely the creation of a specific game, which is a form of self-representation and enhancement of the engaged immigrant and refugee communities. The core of the article is concerned with the project's playful nature, which is explained according to the concept of game by Hans-Georg Gadamer. The article ends with some extra data collected through interviews, as well as a reflection concerning the experimented practice.