Year 1, 30 credits
Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, University of Bristol
From 2017 to 2022, I directed the undergraduate Being Human unit at the Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, University of Bristol. The unit introduced first-year students to participatory design and research methods for innovation, with a strong emphasis on learning through practice, reflection, and documentation. Each year, approximately 120 students from thirteen different academic disciplines worked in transdisciplinary teams to address real-world challenges in collaboration with communities and organisations in Bristol.
During this period, the unit assessment was aligned with the Design by Nature: Student Design Awards, which focused on environmentally responsible and socially inclusive approaches to design. Students were asked to develop affordable, practical, and evidence-based prototypes that brought the multiple benefits of nature into the homes of low-income, inner-city communities. This framing encouraged students to consider environmental sustainability, social equity, and evidence-led design from the outset of their undergraduate studies.
In 2020–21, the unit was delivered through a blended and online format, structured around a series of design and research challenges. Teaching combined facilitated studio workshops, recorded lectures, case studies, and curated learning resources. Students engaged with a diverse range of external contributors, including documentary filmmakers, sustainable futures researchers, specialist subject librarians, and local community activists. These contributors not only shared professional perspectives but also shaped the design challenges and research tasks undertaken by student teams.
Weekly teaching materials supported students’ developing research and design practices and included contextual lectures, discipline-specific case studies, and tailored library research resources developed in collaboration with specialist librarians at the University of Bristol. Students produced a range of outcomes across the unit, including reflective writing, mapping, photography, and social media-based research, culminating in a final team submission to the Design by Nature Awards.
One student team, Natural Plushies, was shortlisted for the award and received funding to further develop their prototype. This outcome demonstrated the value of the unit’s participatory and community-engaged approach to teaching innovation in the first year of undergraduate study.