Category: Design for sustainability
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Design for Planet Festival 2024
This article was written on 15th November 2024 On 6th November, I had the privilege of attending the Design Council’s Design for Planet Festival 2024 in Manchester, where designers, studios, and businesses came together with the aim of working towards a net-zero future. The event was opened by inspiring leaders including Andy Burnham, Mayor of […]
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Transformative Learning for Sustainable Transitions
Inner Development Goals (IDG) Annual Summit in Stockholm This week, the non-profit initiative Inner Development Goals (IDG) held its annual summit in Stockholm. The goal of IDG is to harness the power of inner development to tackle global challenges, such as those outlined by the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The IDG community has developed a framework […]
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Why Carbon Literacy Training Matters
What is Carbon Literacy Training you might wonder? It is a programme designed to educate people on how their everyday activities create carbon impacts and how these can be reduced. It is currently available for all staff and students at the Open University to undertake for free. It involves approximately 4 hours of self-study […]
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(Design) ecologies for learning and practice
In this post I acknowledge the contributions of Schumacher College to current shifts toward life-centred design and ‘design for planet’, show how Schumacher exemplifies the concept of ecologies for learning and practice, and draw out insights of value for our new B.Design in development. Collapsing and re-organising In late August 2024 the trustees of Dartington […]
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Adventures in design: a curiosity-driven career
Taking the plunge to study for a career in any field is a bold and purposeful step in life. To pursue a creative career takes perhaps an even bolder leap of faith when the array of potential work roles is so diverse and constantly evolving. Design roles today are no exception. More younger adults are […]
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Food, shelter and re-designing home
As a new resident in Milton Keynes, I’ve brought along my decades-long curiosity about how people live day to day and how they organise themselves in different places and cultures to meet needs for food and shelter. Since neither can be guaranteed for all people anywhere in a world of deepening inequality, designers committed to […]
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Lessons from a Santaless Sleigh
Having been asked to provide a Design Blog just ahead of Christmas, I wondered how I might combine this yuletide timing with my design research. I have been working on both research and teaching pieces that explore the product, service and system design impacts of emerging electric and autonomous vehicle technologies. That’s not very Christmassy. […]
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Presenting Futures Literacy to the Scottish Government
One of the things we get to do now and again as academics is to speak to governments and politicians in policy areas we are interested in. This year, the OU in Scotland contributed to the Royal Society of Chemistry event Science and the Parliament event. This brings together scientists, business, politicians, and government to […]
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Contemplating the Future of Public Transport
Miguel Valdez and Matt Cook and I have been asked to write an article for The Conversation on ‘The Future of Public Transport’ and I am grappling with the draft text at this very moment. It’s not that we haven’t been doing very relevant research on the design of transport systems and their implications, but […]
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Teaching ‘Climate Creativity’
A few months ago, I was invited by Kathmandu University as a guest lecturer to run a workshop on Climate Creativity for their final year BA students in Design and Fine Art. The three-week-long workshop was part of their Studio Practice module and through a practice-based approach aimed at generating reflection on the relationship between […]