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Intensive Courses

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EXPECTATIONS AND GOALS

What were the intensive courses?

 SciCultureD fostered co-creative approaches, civic participation, a system thinking mindset and responsible innovation amongst educators, professionals, HEI students and academics to drive positive change and impact the wider community.  

During the three ScicultureD intensive course, participants were trained to develop their resilience and multicultural understanding while diversifying their skill set in project management, transdisciplinary team working, design and systems thinking, entrepreneurship, creativity, scientific processes, innovation and arts-related skills.

  •  The courses used the Creative Pedagogies with a core focus on embodied dialogue, together with a learning-by doing approach around a central challenge that groups of participants will address. 
  • The training sessions used an open-ended educative approach to ultimately help diverse groups of participants to work together to address major societal and environmental challenges.
  • One major take-away from this course was to go through a process of challenging your own perspectives and learn how to shift it with the inputs of other disciplines and backgrounds. It is ok to feel confused or frustrated during some activities: it is part of the learning process! Shifting your own perspectives means enriching your ideas and experiences with complementary ones that could lead to innovative solutions. 

How were the courses structured?

The Schedule

The Schedule

We aimed to deliver a complete programme within 5 days - from Monday to Friday. Hence the activities took usually place from 8:30 or 9 AM up to 6 PM with multiple coffee break and lunch time (this is why it is called intensive course!)

The Theme of the Course​

The Theme of the Course

The Challenge of each course were inspired by the European Green Deal, and SDGs [Sustainable Development Goals, especially 3–5, 11, 13, 16–17]) and were a real problem or issue that the community faces. After being introduced to the theme of the course and the general challenge, participants joined their groups to choose the topic they want to tackle and started exploring it.

The Process

The Double Diamond

Participants addressed the challenge in four phases across five days: each day of the intensive course was dedicated to each one of the Double Diamond phases adapted from Design Thinking: Discover, Define, Develop, and Deliver. The first days was usually dedicated to ice breakers, getting to know each other and the introduction to the challenge (problem) and the local context. In the last day , participants were involved in the presentation or sharing session (deliver) of what teams had developed between day 2 and day 4.

Working in Groups

Home Groups

Since day 1, participants were assigned to a group with other participants of mixed countries and backgrounds. During the week, the groups kept meeting and discussing ways to address their challenge following the inputs from the facilitators or external experts. Facilitators were always present for questions or support. Together, they learnt how to collaborate in a multicultural and multidisciplinary context, overcoming challenges and seizing complementarity.

The Facilitators

Mentoring & direct inputs by the facilitators​

The SciCultureD’s partners (called facilitators) mentored the teams through direct input sessions and workshops, providing some contextual knowledge on the theme and how to address it. For examples, sessions on transdisciplinary knowledge like entrepreneurship, science communication or the dialogue between arts and science. Other workshops included Science Theatre, Storytelling, Soundscape, Makers Workshop and the Business Canvas Model - just to give an idea.

Field Trips & Social Activities

Field Trips & Social Activities

We wished to organise a fun and relaxing learning course that steered bonding and personal growth. For this reason, we also included field trips - i.e. visits to local communities, initiatives and locations to better learn about the challenge and local context. Social activities included dinners, networking events, games and visits to local cultural attractions - usually from 5 PM on.

Reflection Time and Feeback

Reflection time and Feedback

We dedicated time to self- and group reflection: this activity supported the learning process. Examples of reflection activities are: building a photolog, group reflection facilitated by the tutors, focus groups and a final survey in order to collect everyone's suggestions.
INTENSIVE COURSE 2022

The future of sustainable educational communities for Greece

The future of sustainable educational communities for Greece was at the heart of this 5-day intensive course from the 20th to the 24th June 2022, in Athens, Greece, hosted by ScienceView. Participants worked in groups on a project to challenge their views of sustainable educational communities for Greece of today and what it could be in the future.

By working in transdisciplinary teams and using the Design Thinking approach & the creative pedagogies, they investigated the future of sustainable educational communities in a country that changes and has just surpassed a great economic crisis.

They saw the topic from various perspectives with a specific challenge: developing an innovative proposal for how sustainable communities in Greece could evolve and address the global challenges related to sustainability and green transition.

 
INTENSIVE COURSE 2023

Why does transformation need Third Places and how can they be designed?

Third places are open spaces that differ from the two other environments we live in private homes and workplaces, schools and universities. Examples of third places include cafes, maker spaces, public libraries, bookstores, and arts organizations like galleries, theaters, and museums but also “virtual spaces” that offer accessible meeting opportunities on a “neutral ground”.

From the 8th until the 12th of May 2023, SciCultureD participants from different backgrounds and stakeholders from the city of Bochum developed and co-created innovative ideas on how to create “Third Places” as centres for more inclusive, participatory and sustainable communities. The course was hosted by city2science.

INTENSIVE COURSE 2024

How can communities become co-creators of green, inclusive and just cities in urban contexts?

From the 15th until the 19th of April 2024, the SciCultureD’s third intensive course invited 26 participants to explore ansswers to this challenge in the context of a post-colonial country such as Malta, with the cultural and built heritage that it entails. The course was hosted by the University of Malta.

In an era of complex urban challenges affecting environmental and social wellbeing, the very same cities can become the hubs of just and sustainable communities.

A place where people with diverging experiences, ideas, and perspectives can work together to create innovative partnerships between entrepreneurs, public institutions and civil society. Cities are spaces that can open doors to explore, discover and test ways towards better, healthier lives for those living in them.

Testimonials

We chose to create a place or an experience to open up an arena to inspire, discover, and discuss possibilities for solutions [...] We recognized that each person would want to communicate their needs and thoughts in different ways.
Malta participant
Needless to say, I didn‘t return to Freiburg as the same person who left for Malta. I came back with a whole new perspective on thinking, learning and creating. The multifaceted skill set brought with it a renewed motivation and confidence to put my thoughts into action not just at work but also in my daily life.
Neher Aseem Parimoo
Malta participant
It's nice to be able to learn how to use this sort of toolbox with other people to get to places you would have never gotten to if you just use them on your own.
Mikiel Cassar
Malta Ambassador
We know the solutions but they have to be fun, so this was basically what we were doing here, and we felt empowered, and we felt connected. And if we make other people feel the same, it will be much faster and much easier to change the world in a better way.
Lara Schilling
Germany Ambassador
In Norway, we will be able to do something at HVL, a course where we can use this kind of working together with the students there.
Anne Skaar
Norway Ambassador