On the 22nd November 2023, Sustainable Futures held the Sustainability Teaching and Learning Community of Practice Launch Event. Part of the Inspired and Informed Futures Challenge Area, this event was a University wide community of practice (CoP) in, and around, sustainability (self defined) teaching and learning. Held in conjuction with the Institute of Teaching and Learning, this workshop launched the CoP network in this space and showcased the award winning Round View.
The event introduced a recent pedagogical innovation, hands-on learning tools that are being trialled via Joanne Tippett's British Academy Innovation Fellowship with the UK National Commission for UNESCO as a means to rapidly accelerate sustainability learning and engagement. Watch this brief video explaining this here:
To date over 133,300 people have engaged with the learning tools in installations and workshops in UNESCO sites, the National Trust, Manchester Museum and libraries in Greater Manchester. The learning tools act as ‘boundary objects’ (spanning ways of knowing), sparking new ways of imagining sustainable futures through word games and poems that are revealed as the pieces are puzzled together.
Joanne was awarded Sustainable Futures External Partners Feasibility to develop three-dimensional learning resources to teach sustainability in libraries, museums and cultural spaces. This work has recently received a further boost with a workshop with multi-lingual poets to translate the poems used as part of the learning tools into Mandarin, Arabic, Urdu, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic and Shona. These multi-lingual tools will be tested and developed in work with Manchester UNESCO City of Literature in the next few months.
The event featured a demonstration RoundView given by Joanne herself. RoundView is a big-picture, positive vision of sustainability that can inspire action towards sustainability engagement in individuals and organisations. It sets out a clear, simple set of positive guidelines based on the opposites of the root causes of environmental damage. It uses innovative learning-aids to communicate environmental ideas in an accessible way. The RoundView has been used to develop critical thinking and professional skills in teaching in undergraduate and postgraduate teaching at the University, in Planning, Property and Environmental Management and the Manchester Institute of Education in SEED.
After the demonstration, attendees were invited to join a workshop session where a discussion on how to use Round View in teaching ensued.
The workshop proved a big success with an attendee stating:
“Thanks again for the RoundView game this afternoon. I think we have a winner here and the idea of using it for an induction and a way of looking at things in Manchester for everyone is very appealing to me… it should be part of every decision/creation process and we all need to learn to use it as a reflex and become skilled at it…”
Further, the success of RoundView and this workshop prompted it to be used in a Master's module at the Alliance Manchester Business School and a second year module at the Manchester Institute of Education.
A networking session followed the workshop, where attendees were given the opportunity to chat and discuss the day's topics over tea, coffee and cakes. After a successful and thought-provoking day, the event was brought to a close.
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