Designed to Learn: Talk, Workshop and Beach Clean (Rathlin Sound Maritime Festival)

Description

This fascinating talk and creative workshop gave an overview of the Future Island-Island project where two academics explained and delivered hands-on creative, design-led workshops to children aged 9-11 years old (Key Stage 2) based on creating board games relating to specific environmental themes such as marine plastic waste, habitat loss and land pollution.

At the end of this talk, children dove into the world of storytelling through the immersive lens of game design. Using character cards, from The Extraordinaires Design Studio framework, to address how environmental impacts affect these characters, children learnt about critical issues while creating imaginative and extraordinary games in a collaborative setting.

This talk and workshop provided an overview of previous children’s creative workshops, the project’s methodology, partners and showcased some designs and learnings taken from these sessions. Key insights also relate to understanding how children learn about otherwise abstract and difficult topics, the impacts and the benefits of design-led learning, and the power of creativity in all forms.

After the conclusion of the talk and creative workshop, children were invited to take part in a beach clean along their harbour beach where they learnt about the Beach Clean 2.0 methodology and utilised the equipment that accompanies this established beach clean activity.

Period	25 May 2026
Event type	Workshop
Location	United KingdomShow on map
Degree of Recognition	Local