Arts University Plymouth shapes circular design education through Fab City partnership

<p>In <em><a href="https://blog.fab.city/shifting-design-education-for-bioregional-culture-circularity-800eb95d6011" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Shifting Design Education for Bioregional Culture &amp; Circularity</a></em>, Professor Owens explores how creative education can help students move beyond linear models of production and towards design methods that are rooted in place, materials, ecosystems and shared knowledge.</p> <p>The article builds on Professor Owens’ recent Times Higher Education feature, <em><a href="https://www.timeshighereducation.com/campus/enter-circle-teaching-circularity-practice-ground" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Enter the circle: teaching circularity in practice from the ground up</a></em>, in which she argues that creative universities must close the gap between sustainability awareness and practical creative action.</p> <p>Together, the two pieces position Arts University Plymouth as an active contributor to international thinking on circular design education, regenerative practice and the role of specialist creative universities in responding to planetary challenges.</p>

<p>For Professor Owens, circularity in creative education is not only about what happens to an object after it is made. It begins much earlier, with the materials, systems, places and relationships that shape creative practice from the start.</p> <p>Writing for Times Higher Education, Professor Owens argues that students need to move beyond the linear “take, make, waste” model and learn to work with the flows of materials, resources and ecosystems. Her phrase “form follows flow” captures a shift from designing objects in isolation to designing with the systems that make those objects possible.</p> <p>At Arts University Plymouth, this thinking is being developed through postgraduate Design teaching, the Centre for Circular Materials, Fab Lab South West and the university’s partnership with Fab City Foundation.</p> <p>Rather than treating sustainability as an additional theme, students are encouraged to ask how circularity can become a creative method: what materials are available locally, how they move through systems, who and what they affect, and how design can work more responsibly with the living world.</p>

<p>Professor Owens’ Fab City article places Plymouth at the centre of this discussion. She describes the city as a place shaped by connection, exchange and reinvention, with an identity formed not only by geography but by relationships with other places, makers and communities.</p> <p>Arts University Plymouth’s role in this story is rooted in its long history of material-led creative education. Founded in 1856 as Plymouth Drawing School, the university has grown from traditions of drawing, craft and technical practice into a specialist arts university with expertise across design, media, digital fabrication, ceramics, glass, textiles, wood, metals, biomaterials and material research.</p> <p>The university established its Fab Lab in 2014, connecting students, staff and partners with digital fabrication tools, open-source approaches and the international Fab Lab network. Renamed <a href="https://www.aup.ac.uk/research/supported-projects/fab-lab-south-west">Fab Lab South West</a> in 2024, it is now part of a wider creative ecosystem linking making, research, teaching and civic engagement.</p> <p>Through this combination of material knowledge, digital fabrication and place-based teaching, Professor Owens writes that Arts University Plymouth has helped Plymouth become “a visible node in transformative art and design education”.</p>

<p>Arts University Plymouth’s partnership with Fab City Foundation is now embedded within MA Design teaching through a series of Fab City Research Intensives.</p> <p>These sessions introduce students to distributed futures, local production, regenerative practice, open knowledge and the <a href="https://fab.city/learning-hub/resource-fab-city-full-stack" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Fab City Full Stack</a> framework. They ask students to understand their work not only as individual outcomes, but as part of wider systems of material flow, supply chains, natural ecologies, economic conditions and shared knowledge.</p> <p>Professor Owens describes the partnership as helping students develop “a bioregional perspective on design” and approach creative subjects as “ecosystem design”.</p> <p>In practice, this means students are encouraged to work from the specific conditions of Plymouth and the South West, while also connecting their ideas to international networks of makers, cities, researchers and educators.</p>

<p>The Fab City Research Intensives form part of Arts University Plymouth’s wider postgraduate Design pathway, which includes <a href="https://www.aup.ac.uk/courses/postgraduate/ma-design">MA Design</a>, <a href="https://www.aup.ac.uk/courses/postgraduate/ma-design-built-environment">MA Design (Built Environment)</a>, <a href="https://www.aup.ac.uk/courses/postgraduate/ma-design-communication">MA Design (Communication)</a>, <a href="https://www.aup.ac.uk/courses/postgraduate/ma-design-fashion">MA Design (Fashion)</a> and <a href="https://www.aup.ac.uk/courses/postgraduate/ma-design-textiles">MA Design (Textiles)</a>.</p> <p>Across these courses, students explore circular production, non-extractive processes, systems-thinking, material investigation, prototyping and emerging fabrication technologies. They are encouraged to consider how local resources, supply chains and ecological conditions can shape the design process.</p> <p>In her Fab City article, Professor Owens gives the example of students working with bioconcrete adapted from an open-source recipe and strengthened using a local species of miscanthus grass. The value of the work was not only in the material outcome, but in how it shifted students’ understanding of authorship, responsibility and place.</p> <p>Professor Owens writes that this kind of learning helps student designers “operate at the level of cause rather than merely effect”, placing creative practice at the point where materials, ecologies, supply chains and economic systems meet.</p>

<p>This work is closely connected to Arts University Plymouth’s <a href="https://www.aup.ac.uk/research/centre-for-circular-materials">Centre for Circular Materials</a>, a research-led hub focused on rethinking how materials are designed, produced, used and kept in circulation.</p> <p>The Centre brings together artists, designers, researchers and partners to explore how material choices can support more responsible creative practice. It also strengthens the university’s work in circular economy research, knowledge exchange and industry collaboration.</p> <p>For students, the Centre supports a learning environment where materials are not treated as neutral resources or technical details. They become sources of knowledge, responsibility and creative possibility.</p>

<p>Fab City Foundation’s work is based on the idea of locally productive, globally connected places. Its international network supports cities and regions to explore how they can produce more locally while sharing knowledge openly.</p> <p>Arts University Plymouth’s partnership with Fab City Foundation brings this thinking directly into creative education. It gives students access to international expertise while asking them to begin with the specific conditions of Plymouth, the South West and the material ecologies around them.</p> <p>This is what gives the partnership wider significance. It is not only a teaching collaboration, but a developing model for how specialist creative universities can help students understand circularity as lived practice: grounded in materials, connected to place and open to global exchange.</p>

<p>Read Professor Stephanie Owens’ article for the Fab City Global Initiative: <em><a href="https://blog.fab.city/shifting-design-education-for-bioregional-culture-circularity-800eb95d6011" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Shifting Design Education for Bioregional Culture &amp; Circularity</a></em>.</p> <p>Read Professor Stephanie Owens’ Times Higher Education article: <em><a href="https://www.timeshighereducation.com/campus/enter-circle-teaching-circularity-practice-ground" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Enter the circle: teaching circularity in practice from the ground up</a></em>.</p> <p><a href="https://www.aup.ac.uk/posts/fab-city-foundation-partnership-ma-design">Read more about Arts University Plymouth’s partnership with Fab City Foundation.</a><br /></p>