Sustainable development features strongly in a significant number of the hundreds of placements and work based learning projects that take place each year:
Hands on Bristol
Students in UWE Bristol's Architecture and the Built Environment
department have the opportunity to be involved with collaborative,
project-based work through Hands On Bristol.
Hands on Bristol is a collaboration between the Bristol School of
Architecture, University of the West of England and the Bristol
community, that seeks to encourage and strengthen knowledge
exchange between education programmes and local communities through
collaboration in live projects.
Hands on Bristol gives local groups and specialists the unique
opportunity to transform spaces across Bristol. Previous projects
have included:
- self-built pocket parks
- light installations
- densification proposals
- a community cinema
- recycling clothes shop
- community art interventions and greening the high street.
The possibilities are broad and endless. Using a built environment challenge posed by community groups or organisations as the starting point, architecture students work through a number of steps to develop and deliver a design brief for a project. Working with communities has helped to develop practice-ready professional experience for UWE Bristol graduates, whilst stitching a bond between the student and the city. Many of the proposals developed are self-build and (almost) zero-budget solutions.
Widening Occupation Weeks
Students studying Occupational Health undertake a compulsory two
weeks of volunteering at the start of their second year of study as
part of Widening Occupation Weeks (WOW).
The aims of WOW are to enable students to: 1.Develop knowledge
of what occupations are available in the community 2.Gain personal
experience of community involvement 3.Reflect on social and
cultural contexts of different occupations 4.Reflect on demands of
a range of occupations 5.Consider the relationship between the
individual, the group, the environment and the occupation.
MSc Sustainable Development in Practice
UWE Bristol's MSc Sustainable Development in Practice Masters is a cross-disciplinary programme, consisting of modules run by all four of UWE's faculties. The course facilitates interdisciplinary staff and student working on real life sustainability challenges and projects.
ParkHive project
During 2015 UWE Bristol staff began the Bristol ParkHive
project.
This project is designed to increase awareness and use of public
green space in Bristol. It has employed graduate interns and given
students from across UWE Bristol the opportunity to engage in a
truly multidisciplinary real life project. Students
have gained new skills and valuable experience in working on a
live, interdisciplinary project.
