Conference Agenda

Higher education in prisons remains both insufficiently available and structurally marginalised within the UK prison education system. Prisoners’ Education Trust reports that provision in prisons in England continues to focus predominantly on literacy, numeracy and vocational education, with higher education opportunities largely restricted to distance learning and a small number of fragile prisons university partnerships. These arrangements are widely recognised as insufficient to meet learner needs or support meaningful progression into higher levels of study. Participation in education has also declined in recent years, alongside deteriorating prison regimes and reduced time out of cell (Prisoners’ Education Trust, 2024). While design research has a strong tradition of engaging with complex public services, prison education remains under-examined as a site for systemic design inquiry (University of the Arts London, 2021).This Conversation addresses that gap by bringing together design researchers, many of whom will have little direct familiarity with the prison education policy landscape, to collectively explore how universities might contribute to more inclusive and sustainable higher education provision in low-security prison contexts. The aim is not to propose solutions, but to identify tensions and generate new research questions for the design research community.

In a period of rapid change, this conversation will provide an opportunity for participants to better understand how design instructors are making decisions regarding AI in the classroom. Some might fear repercussions for their actions or feel pressure to implement AI against their judgment. Are individuals actively rejecting recommendations? Teaching against their values? How much do they agree or disagree with policy that trickles down from leaders in the school? How are these difficult questions and the confusion caused by the unleashing of AI into the university affecting teaching in general, not only for students but for instructors as workers? Our objective is to enable design faculty to compare notes on this topic and share resources in order to dispel confusion and offer more clarity for those facing difficult decisions and potential consequences. Through this session, design educators will not only learn about the range of others’ experiences negotiating the gaps between their course policies and institutional stances, but also leave with potential strategies to alleviate the confusion of this volatile period in order to confidently teach. We especially hope to unearth tactics that educators are adopting when their attitude toward AI differs from that of their institutions. Design education is uniquely positioned: it values creativity, critique, and ethics, yet faces industry pressing demands to incorporate emerging technologies. Our conversation will support reflection on this situation in relation to the particularities of design in higher educational institutions, and to offer design educators a supportive place in navigating this complex new terrain.

In recent years, Transition Design and Systemic Design have both emerged as prominent design-led responses to complex, interconnected societal challenges such as climate change, social inequality, and long-term sustainability transitions (Irwin, 2015; Jones & Van Ael, 2022). Both foreground systems thinking, multi-scalar intervention, and the need for design for systems change (Ceschin & Gaziulusoy, 2016). As a result, the two are increasingly referenced together in research, education, and practice.

This conversation proposes an open, collective inquiry into the boundaries, tensions, and field-level implications of Transition Design and Systemic Design. By assembling conveyors and participants from diverse institutions and geographies who bring a multitude of perspectives together from research, education, and practice, the session aims to surface shared foundations, productive frictions, and unresolved questions within and between Systemic Design and Transition Design. In doing so, this conversation seeks to contribute to a more explicit articulation of how these approaches can strengthen design’s future capacity for systemic change, and to identify directions for further research, theory-building, pedagogy, and practice.