MA Regenerative Design

Applications are open for MA Regenerative Design for entry in 2023. Sign up for the MA Regenerative Design virtual open event on Friday June 30 at 2pm (BST).

Sustainability is not enough: MA Regenerative Design goes further, helping you to develop your creative practice for a more-than-human world. The course is taught online and is “ultra-local”. You will be embedded within your home biosphere and community to develop a locally specific regenerative design project. 

This course equips you to place biodiversity, climate, cultural and socio-economic equity at the heart of your work.   

MA Regenerative Design goes beyond sustainability and actively contributes to restore and replenish what human activities have radically deteriorated. From intensive agriculture, to expanding mega cities, energy production, design and manufacture, global economics and finance systems, the majority of human endeavours manifests a worldview in which the natural world is understood as a resource to be exploited. Designers materialise their creative vision by specifying and orchestrating transformative processes and materials which, renewables or not come from Earth. As such they carry a large responsibility when it comes to climate and biodiversity impact. With a fast-expanding human population, one million species at risk of extinction, and a looming global climate shift, we need to transition towards a new culture of repair. Regenerative Design is a rising discipline that incorporates principles of deep ecology and living system thinking (Naess, Capra, Reed), regenerative cultures (Wahl), circular design (Webster, Ellen MacArthur Foundation), autonomous design (Escobar) and a fundamental understanding of planetary health to develop new creative propositions that can help restore our biodiversity, climate and empower communities through design. Instead of perpetuating an anthropocentric mindset which leads to the depletion of our underlying life-support systems, regenerative design goes beyond sustainable and circular design principles to actively promote a multi-species approach where human and non-human species co-habit holistically. 

This course proposes to engage with an online community of designers who will be studying from their local contexts to develop an action research project in regenerative design and actively contribute to holistically restore their local biosphere taking into account endemic cultures, indigenous voices and socio-cultural tenets as appropriate. Students will come from a range of craft and design backgrounds (fashion, textiles, jewellery, product, service, architecture, craft, ceramics…) and will learn how to revisit their respective creative practice via a regenerative lens whether they live in a rural or urban context. 

Fundamentally the course aims to enable students to adopt living systems principles for the development of holistic and regenerative design proposals.

Design questions addressed through the teaching and curriculum content include:
–How can design participate as nature (Wahl, Naess)?  
–How does multi-species thinking manifest in design? How do we design craft artefacts, products, services or systems for a more than human world? 
–What are the distinctive features of regenerative design in an urban setting vs. a rural environment? 
–How do we translate permaculture principles into life-enhancing design proposals at the service of planetary health?  
–How do we design to restore our biodiversity and climate whilst empowering local communities and protecting endangered crafts? 
–How do we integrate and respect indigenous knowledge and ways of life in the design agenda? 
–Can regenerative design be a pivotal agent of change for an interconnected decarbonisation, decolonisation and de-extinction agenda?   
–What can design learn from cultural anthropology and indigenous knowledges to adopt new locally and culturally-specific regenerative models across creative disciplines (fashion, textiles, jewellery, product, service, architecture)?

Course length and mode of study
MA Regenerative Design is delivered over two years (60 weeks) in Extended Full-Time (EFT) mode. All the formal teaching, including formative and summative assessments, is delivered online 

Applications
Applications are reviewed until the course is full. Full details of entry requirements can be found on the course pages of our website.