Centre for Circular Materials

Arts University Plymouth has launched the Centre for Circular Materials, a research-led hub exploring how materials are chosen, used and kept in circulation across creative practice, design fabrication and innovation.

A newly consolidated initiative, the Centre for Circular Materials brings together a distinctive body of work already taking shape in courses and research projects across the University that are grounded in materials-led creative practice, place-based curricula and responsible design. 

Celebrating its 170th year in 2026, Arts University Plymouth brings a long-standing culture of practice-led teaching and skilled making to the Centre for Circular Materials. Across the Materials Lab, Biomaterials Lab, Natural Dye Lab and Fab Lab South West, students and researchers explore circular design through locally grown dyes, regional clay and material-led prototyping that considers the full lifecycle of what is made.

The Centre for Circular Materials creates an interdisciplinary framework for new ideas to take shape across postgraduate design study, academic research and knowledge exchange. It strengthens how students, researchers and the University's industry collaborators engage with circularity as a commitment to systems thinking, where consideration for the environmental and planetary impact of manufacture and creative making involves deep material knowledge to design artefacts that eliminate end-of-life waste. 

Recent activity includes:
Of the Ground—developing regenerative colour through a natural dye garden and plant-based approaches to textile practice.

Digital Clay—exploring how South West clay, soil and coastal minerals can inform place-based ceramics as a more regenerative form of object-making.

Agrikinetics—testing miscanthus grass pulp as a chemical-free alternative to imported paper and card packaging.

Barnaby’s Brewhouse—prototyping a system to capture and reuse CO2 from fermentation within a circular regional production model.

The Centre for Circular Materials is built on two established Arts University Plymouth platforms. Since 2009, Making Futures™ has provided an international research conference leading debates on contemporary material practice, sustainability, craft and emerging technologies. Fab Lab South West extends that academic enquiry into applied prototyping, giving students and city partners access to digital fabrication tools, technical expertise and a hands-on method for testing new ideas and services. By bringing these two platforms together, the Centre for Circular Materials facilitates the generation of more planet-conscious ways of living and consuming as creative citizens, and encourages solutions to global challenges to be grounded in local knowledge and understanding.  

Professor Stephanie Owens, Dean of Arts, Design & Media at Arts University Plymouth, said: “The Centre for Circular Materials gives real visibility and momentum to work our academics, students and partners have already been building across material research, making and circular design. At the core of this new research centre, our approach to circularity is more than theoretical, it is a call to creative action grounded in the South West, learning from what can be sourced, grown, reused, and remade here, and in inspiring designers to develop responsible material methodologies that are intellectually rigorous and relevant to the environmental realities shaping contemporary life.”

For postgraduate students at Arts University Plymouth, the Centre for Circular Materials encourages a learning environment in which practice-led research, material experimentation and digital fabrication are closely connected, and demonstrates the university’s growing role in shaping future-facing design education through responsible material use and place-based innovation. 

Explore Arts University Plymouth’s Postgraduate Design Courses

If you have any questions about studying at Arts University Plymouth, please email postgraduate@aup.ac.uk, call +44 (0)1752 203434 or WhatsApp +44 (0)7722 744184.