Category: Design engagement
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Civic action during and beyond COVID – challenges and opportunities
It is without doubt true that the coronavirus pandemic has disrupted our ‘normal’ way of life, our work and the way we communicate and socialise with others. Many people now increasingly face important economic, health and mental wellbeing challenges and some groups within our society are hit worse than others (e.g. women, and BAME groups). […]
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Reflections on participatory design at the OU- in a Design Emergency
There are a few advantages that stem from the current pandemic. As well as momentary improvement in air quality and watching wildlife re-occupy some urban environments, conferences that previously we would have had to travel to, can now be joined on a mobile phone. This opens up many possibilities – conversations taking place across the […]
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The Challenge of Re-Opening a Community Garden – The Covid-19 Crisis and Access to and Uses of Green spaces in Cities
Now that the UK lock-down has been eased, although we observe increasingly local lockdowns being actioned, we can start to look back at what impact the Covid-19 crisis had and continues to have on social life in cities. In this short blogpost, I want to share some initial thoughts on the access to and uses […]
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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 […]