Think Play: Using Grassroots Move­ments as Educational Opportunities

This paper will present a design project that was delivered as part of the University of Edinburgh’s Innovative Learning Week program in 2013. Our aim was to engage our students with a grassroots movement and to give them experience of real community needs in times of austerity as well as introduce them to some of the issues facing communities and the designers working with them. The project, Think Play, invited students to work on behalf of a Primary School’s Parent Council group to respond to the school’s plans to re-design the playground, and to propose potential design solutions for the space. The paper will explore the practical, pedagogical and ethical implications of instigating productive collaborations between the university and the general public to create a positive impact on real-world scenarios while drawing attention to the importance and relevance of design based research and practice.