Skills for Planet Explore
Immersive learning experiences that connect sectors and designers to share knowledge and tackle key challenges.
Bring design expertise into your sustainability challenges.
The Explore programmes bring together designers with other sectors through a series of site visits, expert sessions, workshops and design sprints, teaching designers key green design skills that enable them to design innovative solutions for live problems that the sector is facing.
Partner organisations provide access to their sector through site visits, expert insights and real-world challenges, enabling designers to gain practical green skills they can't learn through traditional training. In return, designers apply systemic design thinking and creative problem-solving to generate new ideas, perspectives and solutions live sector problems.
This two-way exchange of knowledge breaks down sector silos, accelerating progress towards environmental and organisational goals.
Who is Explore for?
- Housing providers looking for fresh approaches to retrofit, resident engagement and decarbonisation.
- Regenerative farms and land-use organisations wanting to strengthen sustainable supply chains and material choices.
- Behaviour change specialists seeking new ways to translate insights into practical action.
- Industry bodies and professional networks looking to build capability across an entire sector.
- Environmental and sustainability consultancies wanting to scale the impact of their expertise.
Whoever you are, these programmes provide a unique cross-sector collaboration that leads to better outcomes and deeper understanding for everyone involved.
"The cohort broadened our thinking with fresh perspectives on complex real-world challenges and explored ideas that don't often emerge when we stay within the boundaries of our own sectors. The programme created a great space for new ideas, new ways of thinking, and new collaborations."
Amy Cooper
Director of Sustainability and Innovation, Biffa
Proven in practice
The first Explore pilot, Design Skills for Embedding Circularity, brought designers together with the waste sector through site visits, expert sessions and a live design sprint.
Funded by CIWM and delivered by URGE Collective, in partnership with the Design Council, WRAP and the Circular Economy Institute, the nine month immersive programme took 16 designers on a learning journey to demystify skills for Embedding Circularity, visiting industrial waste and material recovery facilities and receiving expert-led sessions on circular business models, policy and regulation.
Once they’d been upskilled, they undertook a six week design sprint, creating innovative solutions for live challenges the waste sector was facing and helping to design out waste from the outset.
Download the Explore Playbook
A practical Playbook to deliver your own programme.
What sustainability challenge is your organisation trying to solve?
We've created a practical Playbook to help organisations with specialist knowledge and a desire to drive change to design and deliver their own programme - whether this be a one-week intensive sprint, a series of short site visits, or a longer programme to help you unlock new ideas.
Download your free copy of the Playbook and explore how Design Council can support your organisation to develop an Explore programme.
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