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Undergraduate design learning in multiple partnerships: joinedupdesign for academies

The nature of this research is to articulate a new model of ‘off-campus learning’. The innovative approach for student design and community projects, to invigorate young people's engagement with important areas of community life, has been showcased through the HEA Art, Design and Media Subject Centre.

This research examined undergraduate design learning through an off-campus partnership. The Sorrell Foundation’s Joinedupdesign for Academies programme involved partnerships between university design departments, ‘failing’ 11–18 schools and professional designers, in the context of a funding commitment to rebuild/renew school buildings in the UK, and an ideological commitment to remodel schools as ‘Academies’. Using a mixed methods case study approach, the authors illustrated the acquisition of a wide range of employability skills, vital for professional designers, through an innovative learning model in which pupils act as clients. This research concluded that, these partnerships, in terms of desing education, provided a rare and authentic exposure to the complex demands of publicly-funded work for undergraduate design students, and as such offer a new and potentially interesting model for experiential design education, which bridges campus and off-campus learning.

Collaborating with the Sorrell Foundation, Schaber has been programme coordinator for two DCSF funded Joinedupdesign for academies pilot projects. The value of funding support from the Sorrell Foundation totalled £20.000. This involvement was represented in the subsequent rebuild of school campuses at Bedford Academy and All Saints in Dunstable.

It informed master plans presented by the Sorrell Foundation and government policy on education. http://www.policyconnect.org.uk/apdig/sorrell-foundation-young-design-program

The completion of the programme has been celebrated through presentation and exhibition at the Young Design Centre, Somerset House, as part of the London Design Festival 2009. The engagement with the Sorrell Foundation allowed the team around the author to strategically contribute to the ‘Building Schools for the Future’ programme, aligning with government initiatives and the potential to impact significantly on local regeneration centred around Bedford Academy and All Saints in Dunstable.