Category: Design engagement
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‘UK Makerspace – make things, do stuff and knit the community together’
Over a decade ago the term Makerspace, Hackerspace or Fablab would have been a relatively unknown term by the general populous. If the terms were understood then perhaps they would be thought of as niche or even geeky. Today the term Makerspace, Hackerspace or Fablab are more commonly known and to date there are over […]
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Fieldwork is Fun!?
I’m researching ways to reduce carbon emissions from residential heritage buildings while retaining their heritage values. I’m focussing on Cumbria and the Lake District National Park and before the small matter of coronavirus prevented all activities I was halfway through my fieldwork. My fieldwork is made up of visits to residential buildings across Cumbria and […]
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Join the COVID-19 Digital Sprint Hackathons
Join the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) COVID-19 Digital Sprint Hackathons, now seeking novel ideas and solutions. The Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic poses significant risk to society, the economy and the environment. With the nature of these impacts constantly evolving, there is an urgency in inviting the research and innovation community to come up with novel […]
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Empowering Design Practices Live: celebrating community-led design in historic places of worship
On 12 February 2020, the Empowering Design Practices research team gathered with partners and community collaborators, colleagues, funders and friends to celebrate five years of research exploring community leadership in design within the context of historic places of worship. EDP Live was an opportunity not only to share what we have learned and the resources […]
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Moving to Mars
We had our first family-oriented qualification event on Sunday, 23rd of February in London. We went to the Design Museum and made some puppets with our families and visited the ‘Moving to Mars’ exhibition. My daughter loves hedgehogs. So, this is what we aimed for as a puppet. My daughter commented in the video demonstration […]
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Creating a womens’ network
Part of our trip to Mexico in December was focused on a British Council project to aid the creation of a network for women in science and business on the Yucatan peninsula. A series of events was run in conjunction with the Universidad Privado de la Peninsula (UPP) and the Instituto Yucateco de Emprendedores (IYEM) […]
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FabLab Yucatan – prototyping the future together
Ileana (President of the Fab City Yucatán Association), Oscar, and Carlos gave us a tour of Fablab Yucatan when we visited Merida, Mexico in November 2019. You can watch the video of the tour on https://www.facebook.com/728801612/videos/10157850699341613/ (approx. 1h 15min) The Lab first opened as HUBlab in 2015. The vision was to form a creative ecosystem of […]
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Exploring Blackpool and High Street Renewal
Last week I visited Blackpool for the first time, to help facilitate an event with local residents looking at high street renewal. The event was organised by The Glass-House Community Led Design in partnership with our Design Group and Historic England, to collaboratively explore how historic high streets can be reimagined to better serve their […]
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Museum of Brands
We followed a recommendation from an OU tutor, Richard Coles (T317), who has been working as a packaging designer for a long while. Under his guidance, a group of students from the Design and Innovation qualification and other qualifications visited the Museum of Brands in London. We were delighted that Robert Opie, the Founder of […]
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Designing Carbon Reduction in Higher Education
The Open University held the first Climate Emergency Forum (CEF) which was attended by a wide range of stakeholders. The CEF had these respectable aims – bring together staff and students to share initiatives develop an action plan and agree next steps identify a steering group to take forward the suggestions oversee the implementation of […]