Interdisciplinary circular economy design education through local and regional partnerships

A review of Educational Sustainable Development (ESD) strategies has found that participatory and collaborative partnerships are the most effective for engaging students with sustainability. To enable students from Higher Education to experience and understand the relevance of the Circular Economy, as opposed to the linear economy, a series of ‘real-life’ collaborative projects have been created for Design students from Product Design, Fashion Design, Commercial Interior Design and Landscape Architecture, bridging the schools of IT Computing and Business with Art and Design. These ‘real life’ projects have been created in collaboration with local and regional charities, local Government and companies. The focus of these ‘real-life’ projects is based upon facets of the Circular Economy, such as ‘Design for Longevity’, ‘Reuse’, ‘Repair’ and ‘Recycling’, with the intention of engaging staff and students with the Circular Economy within each unit of assessment. This work is evaluated using an educational framework based upon the ESD principles, which is embedded throughout the Applied Design degree programmes, with the aim of creating engaging partnerships to improve the quality and impact of the student learning experience. This paper will describe some of the ’real-life’ case studies, focusing upon first year Design degree students, the outcome of these projects will be discussed and reflections made. Fundamentally it is found these collaborative partnerships have the ability to empower students to become active partners in the Circular Economy and the Sustainability agenda.