The Art of Making is about turning ideas into outcomes. Which ideas? Into what kind of outcomes? That depends on you. In this course, you’ll learn about every aspect of ‘making’—understanding, through your own experience, how people use social and intellectual capital to generate and transform knowledge into realities that change our lives and change society.

First, you'll work with experienced, innovative and open minded researchers and fellow students to apply creativity thinking and generate ‘What if?’ ideas, which you’ll refine into ‘The Pitch’ for a design project. If your project spans multiple disciplines, or is genuinely ‘out of the box’, you’ll know you’re in the right course. Then you’ll work on the ‘Planning’ stage with a mentoring panel of at least three researchers from across campus, who together will provide skills across the breadth of your project, and whose aim will be for you to succeed. Once you have worked out what you need to start making the project come to life, then it will be time for ‘Doing’ – fully occupying your mind and hands in ways that will turn your ideas into real things. Again you’ll be fully supported by your mentors, including new ones if you find yourself needing different skills or advice.

The three components of the course—‘The Pitch’, ‘Planning’ and ‘Doing’—will take different amounts of time for different students, depending on individual creativity and interests, and are quite likely to be iterative, as each stage of thinking and learning encourages you to refine the design stages. You’ll be helped to monitor this creative process through weekly reflective approaches to self-assessment and sharing constructive feedback with your peers, in ways that continuously drive you towards effective individual and collaborative learning and the course’s learning outcomes.