The way to grow

Full project title: The way to grow: Innovative pedagogy for skills-focused Education for Sustainability and urban agriculture

Duration: January  to July 2026

Project lead for CESR: Dr Sandrine Simon

Other UWE Bristol researcher: Roberto Rivera Fernandez (internship)

Funder: QR funding

The objective of this research is to develop innovative pedagogies using experiential learning in the context of urban Living labs. It contributes to a broader aim – that of enhancing Education for Sustainable Development and of contributing to creating new learning formats that are better adapted to people’s needs and contemporary contexts. The practical focus for this learning is food production in urban settings, itself connected to sustainability and climate change through food security and sovereignty and regenerative and participatory approaches. Pedagogies will be developed to link these concepts to practical skills (agro-ecology, vertical farming, low tech urban agriculture, permaculture, circular business models).

The objective here is to extend the community of teachers to food-focused Bristol NGOs and UWE Bristol colleagues working on the Sustainable Food Systems master, and to extend the community of learners to marginalised people in Bristol. Contacts have been established with these potential partners, as well as with urban farms in which apprenticeships/work placements could take place. Most of the research focused on designing a new type of professional course, whose learning outcomes focus on a practical and complex issue and ‘sustainability skills’, ‘piloted’ in Autumn 2026.

• Design of a pilot professional course using creative experiential pedagogy.
• Creation of a multidisciplinary/multistakeholder network (UWE Bristol + food focused Bristol NGOs + learners – from UWE  Bristol and marginalised groups) with whom to design a research proposal for SRIP (Strategic Research & Impact Programme) call (2 October 2026).
• Contact with Bristol urban farms and identification of needed procedures to create apprenticeship courses.

The article is now being prepared for the special issue on ‘Creative approaches for enhancing the sustainability of ecology education’ (in the OPEN ACCESS journal Sustainability; IF: 4.1). We have been working on the literature review and analysis of experiential learning and living labs cases in view of designing new pedagogies , in particular, in view of designing an experiential-learning module in ‘Creating Healthy Food Systems’, to be piloted in autumn.

The initial findings of the research and the design of the pilot module will be presented at the following conference: Sustainability & Resilience: Teaching and Research Conference (2027). "The Sustainability & Resilience strand is interested in teaching and learning set within the broad categories of sustainability and resilience, as both subjects of academic research in their own right. The overall event forms part of the International Focus on Pedagogy series.  

For further information about the project, please contact Dr Sandrine Simon (sandrine.simon@uwe.ac.uk).