About the Project

This project builds on the success of the WIHEA-funded “Warwick Sustainability Challenge (WSUsC): a Curriculum-Campus-Community approach to sustainable teaching and learning”. In June 2022, we delivered the first Warwick Sustainability Challenge in partnership with Coventry City Council, which saw staff and students co-creating solutions to a real-life problem linked to sustainable transport. The Challenge received great attention from the local community and beyond. Such was the success of the project that, at Warwick, the project team replicated the workshop for the EUTOPIA Conference 2022, worked with Estates to organise and deliver the Warwick Sustainability Challenge on Waste (in November 2022), and is now working with Student Opportunity to deliver the next iterations of the Challenge. The Challenge and elements of its methodology, in fact, will be regularly replicated by Student Opportunity to engage students with sustainability focused co-curricular activities providing the required support of partners around the university can continue.

Project Aims

Using design thinking as an approach to problem solving, the Challenge will introduce a framework for engaging diverse groups of students to work together, enhancing knowledge exchange and interdisciplinary collaborative ventures. The Challenge will be highly participatory and will offer an opportunity for participants to take what they learn in class to real-life sustainability problems within their institutional context and beyond. There will also be opportunities to collaborate with external stakeholders, linking the teaching and learning provision (Curriculum), to values and ways of working and studying on Campus, and the local Community - i.e., what we define as the 3Cs approach to sustainability.

Project Outcomes

The project's methodology is being replicated beyond Warwick - in particular, the WSUsC has been replicated in two UK institutions, a school in Argentina and a university in Latvia. The WSUsC has been published as part of the ESD guides for Advance HE, and a book chapter - 'Co-creating Sustainable Communities: The Circular Role of Higher Education' - will be published shortly. Currently, the team are planning the next iteration of the Challenge, to be delivered in the summer of 2024.

Project Team

Lead: Lory Barile (Economics)

Lead: Bo Kelestyn (WBS)