Flourishing spaces in higher education and beyond
Our vision
We develop spaces and environments to enable and research flourishing.
Our mission
Our mission is to understand and articulate spaces and environments that enable flourishing and to explore how to make flourishing spaces accessible to all in Higher Education and beyond.
We bring curiosity, creativity and a readiness to learn, engaging both reason and imagination, words and the arts, our bodies and minds.
Our values
Curiosity and epistemic humility: fostering a mindset that recognises that we can learn from every person we meet and that there are more ways than our own of seeing the world
Creative agency: moving from homo economicus, lonely and competitive, towards growing creative agency and voice, to challenge, question and bring creativity to our problem solving.
Connection: catalysing relationship and community, recognising the value and need for bridge building.
Compassion: recognising suffering and oppression, and actively working to relieve, enable and empower the suffering other as well as the suffering self.
Co-creation: recognition of the value of shared agency, flattened hierarchy and systems thinking so that designing flourishing spaces will be enhanced by different parts of the system sharing their voices and perspectives.
Context and need
University education has become increasingly challenging for both staff and students, particularly due to the pressures of COVID-19 and the VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous) times we inhabit with resulting growth in loneliness, poor mental health and burnout. The shift towards digital and remote learning spaces has exacerbated feelings of loneliness and disconnection, leading to increased burnout and mental health challenges. By enabling flourishing spaces, we aim to regeneratively support the development of relationships with ourselves, each other, meaningful work, and the natural environment.
Our aims and priorities
Conceptualisation and Research: To conceptualise, share and research regenerative approaches to flourishing in higher education.
Understanding Flourishing: To better understand how students and staff might grow and reflect in various university spaces, whether digital, face-to-face, informal, formal, student-only, or co-creative student-staff collaborative spaces.
Systems Thinking: To utilise systems thinking approaches to understand organisational-level changes necessary for human flourishing.
International Community: To grow an international community of scholars who explore lived experiences, practices, and research on flourishing spaces through different cultural lenses.
Our theory of change
Action:
Build Collaboration and Community: Foster partnership and collaborative networks .
Research: Conduct thorough investigations into flourishing spaces.
Disseminate: Share findings through publications and innovative formats such as exhibitions and theatre.
Short term outcomes:
Develop a comprehensive narrative and description of flourishing spaces in higher education and beyond.
Organise workshops, events, exhibitions, and community engagements to explore the meaning of flourishing and what flourishing spaces look like.
Conduct collaborative research on flourishing spaces in higher education, focusing on East London and selected global locations.
Long term outcomes
Inform policy development and institutional change .
Influence the Higher Education sector .