UAL Climate Systems Mapping

This pilot research project is motivated by the commitment to net-zero emissions in UAL’s Climate Action Plan and UAL’s Strategy 2022-32 and, beyond science-based targets, UAL’s commitment to social purpose and justice. UAL – like all HEIs and organisations – will be challenged to meet climate targets. With this project, we provide a realistic and systematic overview of where we’re at, illuminating the diversity, amount and momentum of positive climate actions and momentum, at as well illuminating clear pathways and actions toward an ecologically regenerative university. The research approach is grounded in participatory action research (PAR) and research through design (RtD) including – more specifically, ‘design for transitions’ tools. PAR and RtD have substantively engaged students and staff across all campus sites, including experts in higher education and in climate, and selected departments. Our aim is to brief, inspire and equip UAL leaders, colleagues and our community to act collaboratively, collectively and systematically across colleges and levels.

Outputs include a final report and ‘design for transitions’ toolkit. The final report presents five sets of findings toward two research questions: ‘What is…?’, e.g. UAL’s contribution to extraction and regeneration, and; ‘What if…?’, e.g. how might we transition to a regenerative future UAL. The report also includes a number of key insights and proposals for future work resulting from the year-long research project.

The project:

• Offers insights to inform UAL’s leadership position in becoming a social purpose university.
• Explores and applies a systems approach and multi-level perspective transition design framework to the complex challenge of deep-rooted change necessary to achieve social purpose.
• Develops, tests and adapts a set of methods and tools for systemic change, generating findings for this research and for application in other social purpose projects.
• Tests and demonstrates the value of participatory action research (PAR) and research through design (RtD) in identifying perceptions of ‘what is…’ UAL and creative imagining of ‘what if…’.
• Takes an ‘insider knowledge’ approach to frame, gather, analyse and present insights from research with three key UAL departments (Research Management Administration, Library Services and Student Marketing Recruitment Administration), UAL higher education and climate experts as well as wider staff and student communities.
• Outlines findings from six key areas of our primary and secondary research.

Partners:

UAL Social Purpose Lab

Date:

2023-24

Funder:

UAL

UAL Team:

Research Co-Principal Investigators:
Niki Wallace and Ramia Mazé

Research Co-Investigator:
Dilys Williams

Research Assistant:
Domenica Landin

Research assistance and project management:
Niamh Tuft, Natascha Ng, Yiwa Lau

Project team members from UAL’s Social Purpose Lab:
Monique Johnson and Evi Baniotopoulou

Publications:

Wallace, N., Mazé, R., Williams, D., Landin, D., Tuft, N., and Ng, N. (2024) UAL Climate Systems Mapping: Report on the pilot research project. University of the Arts London. ISBN 978-1-906908-85-0 https://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/id/eprint/21978/

Wallace, Niki and Mazé, Ramia and Williams, Dilys and Landin, Domenica (2024) Universities Undergoing Climate Transition: Developing MLP tools from a context- specific and critical standpoint. In: DRS2024, 24-28 June, Boston, US. https://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/id/eprint/22239/