Promoting Environmental Culture in a Colombian Wetland Community
El Muyso Festival
Industry
Environmental Conservation
Fundación Montecito is a non-profit organization based in Sogamoso, Colombia, dedicated to environmental conservation and cultural education through their two nature reserves. With the goal of fostering a deeper connection between the local community and Lake Tota’s wetlands, we partnered with them to create impactful, educational experiences.
Over the course of 8 weeks, we worked closely with Fundación Montecito to develop a suite of creative assets aimed at educating and engaging the local community. The work was centered around the annual El Muyso Festival—a celebration of local culture and environmental conservation. We conducted in-depth research, immersed ourselves in the local context, and collaborated with the team to bring this vision to life.
Without a word of Spanish, we created a range of assets, including festival branding, bird guides, and a conservation award—all unveiled at the festival. The result was a successful festival turnout. With the help of templates and tutorials, the team can now sustain these efforts independently.
This work complements a board game, that brings Lake Tota’s story to life in a fun and engaging way.
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Partner: Fundación Montecito
Woodworker: José Luis
Festival Photographer: Casey French
The Question
How might we connect local communities with environmental culture and create a sense of belonging?
The festival branding and educational materials were inspired by El Muyso, a mythical creature from Lake Tota folklore, bridging the community's cultural heritage with the environmental message of the festival. By collaborating with local children and incorporating their drawings of El Muyso, we created designs that sparked pride and a sense of belonging. In addition, we developed a bird guide that educates about species in the region, with a future-proof design to accommodate new discoveries. These materials not only celebrated Lake Tota’s biodiversity but also connected the community to their environment, strengthening their role in its conservation.
The Approach
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We started by speaking with the future protectors of the land—local children. Visiting them at home and school, we learned about their connection to nature, the importance of the festival, and how it serves as a rare opportunity for cultural and community engagement outside of school and work.
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Drawing from these conversations, we identified where to focus our efforts. We prioritized creating assets that resonated with the children's experiences and context, ensuring everything was designed to align with their needs and cultural significance.
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We explored different festival formats, educational materials, and interactive elements, brainstorming ways to make the festival both engaging and informative for the local community while celebrating their heritage.
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We brought our ideas to life with festival branding, a conservation award design, and bird guides. These materials were crafted not just for the festival day but as lasting educational resources to support continued learning and engagement on the reserve.
The festival takes its name from El Muyso, a mythical creature of Lake Tota.
Our illustrations draw from children’s depictions of the mythical creature.
We created a social media campaign to help Felipe build a portfolio for funders.
The Question
How might we create a tool that supports ongoing bird conservation efforts in the reserve?
To support Felipe and his team’s ongoing discoveries of new bird species, we designed a bird guide that’s easy to update. With a loop closure system, new species can be added without reprinting the entire guide—just fill out the template and print.The guide is pocket-sized, weatherproof, and perfect for quick field reference. Each entry includes simple facts about the species and its endangerment level. With the help of AI, we navigated the Spanish-speaking landscape and immersed ourselves in the topic of Colombian biodiversity to create engaging content—one endangered bird at a time.
We redesigned the bird guide with loop binding for easy updates.
The bird guide was launched at the El Muyso Festival.
Pocket-sized, weatherproof—perfect for quick field reference.
Observations
Due to Fundación Montecito’s tireless work, these schoolchildren demonstrated significant knowledge about nature and conservation.
However, a gap exists between the children's knowledge and that of their parents. Due to poverty and limited resources, locals view the land primarily as a source of livelihood, with practices like tree cutting for farming. While not intentionally harming the ecosystem, their focus is on survival, not environmental preservation.
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Our research revealed that community events are usually limited to religion or local government. With school and work being the main activities, festivals hold significant cultural value, all the same, attendees expect something in return.
The festival must strike a balance between fun, conservation, and culture, with a mix of interactive activities to engage the community.
Unexpected Adventures
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Not knowing Spanish while living and working in rural Colombia pushed us to get creative. Felipe became our live translator, and we leaned on AI to generate and translate content for the board game and bird guides.
It took longer, but it made us more patient and intentional in our communication.
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Armed with an iPad and a discussion guide, we naively thought we'd be fine for our home interviews. But we quickly realized showing up as two non-Spanish speakers with tech in hand probably made us look like aliens.
Lesson learned: consider the context and make sure your approach fits.
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When it came time to print the bird guide and game cards, we were hit with blurry text and cheap paper that felt like plastic. It wasn’t the quality we were used to, but we learned to roll with it and adjust our expectations.
We also learned from our project in Malawi that printing locally not only supports the community but also helps keep costs down (sometimes!).
Our impact
“Your Figma templates and other materials have streamlined our design processes. They are user-friendly and have saved us a lot of time.
Felipe continued to say “The bird guides have been incredibly useful. They are now a key resource for both visitors and our team. Local schools have also started using them in their environmental education classes... It's a point of pride for us when we tell the story and its designers behind it.”