The Aegean Atelier, exemplifies sustainable and inclusive education by focusing on the ecological and sociocultural richness of Anatolia, with an emphasis on local crops. One of its recent projects, Mahalle Mantarı, centers on mushrooms and truffles found in the Ömerli-Şile region, aiming to foster understanding of the interconnected relationships between humans, animals, and plants. 

In 2023, key facilitators of Mahalle Mantarı, İklil Selçuk, and Zeynep Delen Nircan, with a scholar from  MSGSÜ co-authored a paper titled Imagining Decent Work Towards a Green Future in a Former Forest Village of the City of Istanbul. This research addresses issues pertaining to the future of work and sustainability through the lens of a case study of ecological deterioration and how it destroys and creates green jobs in a forest village in Istanbul. As elsewhere in major urban centers of developing countries, the hyper-expansion of city regions due to authoritarian developmentalism fosters the state-led construction sector in Turkey. Growth-driven economic policies continue to have adverse effects on the environment, resulting in deforestation among an array of ecological damage. Based on a qualitative analysis of oral history interviews and observations informed by a larger interdisciplinary research project, scholars observed resilience in the forest village under scrutiny as certain types of work are abandoned, and new forms are created by adaptation to the ecological and social conditions. The perceptions of changing conditions by locals vary across existing ethnic, gender, and class hierarchies in the local community.

Moreover, the findings indicate that the types of work available in the village prior to urban transformation were not all decent or green. In the face of ongoing ecological deterioration in a (formerly) forest community, participatory micro-initiatives, and grassroots, utilizing local community projects, emerge that nevertheless pursue a green and just transition. They focus on one such initiative, the Community Fungi platform, to demonstrate the possibility of working towards a collective imagination of a green future inspired by past but unforgotten sustainable communal practices, in the context of the forest village under scrutiny in this paper.