Circular Design: Material Innovation & Entrepreneurship Program

Designing and facilitating a hybrid circular design innovation program

2022

The Challenge

The Goethe Institut hired Annette Fauvel and I to design a landmark circular design program to span Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq. With the location spanning an area roughly half the width of Europe, we thought, how might we make a mostly online program both experiential and valuable?

The Outcome

A four month, hybrid circular design course spanning 3 countries and 30 participants. A total of 16 projects were exhibited in Amman and Beirut. The program involved 24 pioneering speakers and more than 100 contact hours spread across talks, lectures, workshops and field trips.

Client

Goethe Institut

Team

Annette Fauvel (co-designer
and facilitator)

Role

Program Design
Workshop Facilitation

Link

https://takweenjo.org/en/pogram/circular-design-material-innovation-entrepreneurship-0

Unlearn

Week 1: Sustainable Materials
Week 2: Circularity 
Week 3: Bio Innovation
Week 4: Processing

May 7th to June 6th

In the first module of the curriculum, participants were encouraged to “unlearn” what they know and delve deep into different aspects and topics of material innovation.

Weekly challenges were given to exposure participants to hands on material innovation principles.

Relearn

Week 5: Project Discovery
Week 6: Design Research
Week 7: Ideation
Week 8: Market Analysis

June 8th to July 14th

In the second module, participants applied all they learnt from Module 1 'Unlearn' to their own practice as designers and material innovators to find a suitable challenge to develop in Module 3.

This module covered aspects of problem discovery and entrepreneurship.

Develop

Week 9: Project Development
Week 10: Business Visioning 
Week 11: Project Development
Week 12: Small Business Finance
Week 13: Project Development
Week 14: Project Finalisation

July 16th to August 27th

In the final module, participants developed their chosen project briefs while guided by mentors.

In this phase, they had to put together a solid business plan including calculating finances, prepare their exhibition plan and finalise the project to be ready for display.