Introducing our multidisciplinary participants, their learning questions and their projects.
2017 Participants
Ali Norrish
Ali is returning for a second Learning Marathon! She is a UX researcher and fledgling experience designer, creating empowering learning experiences in campaigns for economic system change. Now designing UX for the Economy with Ecnmy.org and organising playful experiences about what money means. Background in digital learning projects, branding and communications. Keen sweeper and lover of games, greetings card addict.
Ali is asking how we might design social learning experiences for economics innovation, agency and activism.
Her mentor is Anna Laycock, Executive Director of the Finance Innovation Lab.
Bailey Kursar
Bailey is currently studying web development at coding bootcamp Makers Academy, having worked in marketing at several tech startups over the last five years. She is looking forward to having the skills she needs to build some of the web apps she's been dreaming about! By joining a learning marathon, Bailey wants to expand her brain with fun new things, while also meeting fun new people.
Bailey is focusing on the design of more accessible learning spaces for curious adults.
Belinda Boakye
Belinda is a Business Consultant that works with social enterprises and creative arts organisations to drive performance. She's worked with individuals and communities across the UK & Brazil on a diverse range of change-making projects. She holds an MSc in Digital Marketing & Communications and is passionate about promoting messages worth sharing.
Belinda will explore the question 'how can the philosophy of critical pedagogy be applied to drive the impact of arts, enterprise and activism in our society?'
Julian Thompson
Julian is currently contracting at Amnesty International UK leading on the development and implementation of their Corporate Partnerships Strategy. He also freelances as a social innovation consultant working with social enterprises to design new services and develop sustainable business models which deliver high social impact. He's passionate about reducing social-economic inequalities and the role community organisations play in this process. He holds a Law degree and Public Policy (MA).
Julian will explore how an innovation lab could enable black community organisations to leverage greater social impact and solutions for the communities they serve.
Lizzie Lynch
Lizzie currently works at School 21, a non-selective state school in Stratford, where she campaigns to raise the status of oracy in the UK curriculum. She’s passionate about helping people, systems and society to listen to each other better. An alumni of Year Here and History & Politics graduate, she’s fascinated to explore using UX design to help us learn from one another.
Lizzie will ask how we might strengthen democracies through a blend of UX design and behavioural science.
Matt Carreau
Matt is a public interest designer, researcher, creative facilitator and urbanist. He is passionate about using design as a tool to help people understand how cities work and take action to create change in their local communities. Hailing from Toronto, and having lived in cities across Canada, Matt moved to London in 2016 and recently completed an internship at the Future Cities Catapult.
Matt will apply the tools of user experience and service design to problems of urban placemaking, to increase citizen engagement and create places that are socially, ecologically, and culturally dynamic.
Matt Weatherall
Matt makes stuff for a purposeful life. His latest creative experiments are a weekly newsletter, called Get Paid Stay Woke; and a house sitting platform for 'start outs', called Launch Pad. In his pursuit of purpose, Matt has met strangers off Gumtree, replaced adverts with photos of cats, and lived with no fixed abode for the last six months.
Matt will be exploring the question 'how can we live purposefully by deviating from norms?'
Locations
This year you can join the Learning Marathon in London, Birmingham, Bristol, Edinburgh and Sofia.
If you're based somewhere else and you'd like to see the Learning Marathon happen in your area, leave your details here.
Upcoming programmes listed below:
London/Stroud
A peer group collectively exploring how we can 'embed more human connection in services and systems'.
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Kick Off will be Nov 2019.
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Find out more and sign up here.
Sofia, Bulgaria
A peer group open to adults aged 25–45 from any professional background.
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Kick Off will be Early 2020.
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Find out more and sign up here.
Rebecca Birch
Rebecca is a Tooting based social designer, ethnographic researcher and coach with a background in design and innovation consulting, social enterprise development, community work and social research. She draws on a combination of social science and design-led approaches and has led projects on the future of smart cities, mental health and wellbeing, early years, education and worklessness. She likes feeding people, getting up high and keeping her plants alive.
Rebecca will focus on using digital technology to gather and present subjective wellbeing data to help Lambeth parents make changes on their own terms and shape support that works for them.
Ruth Taylor
Ruth is a Community Organiser and Campaigner, currently working for Amnesty International UK. In her spare time, she’s a Trustee for a small development organisation, KickStart Ghana, and sits on the international steering committee for the Better Volunteering, Better Care initiative, which works to tackle orphanage voluntourism. An avid reader, podcast-listener and London explorer, Ruth is particularly interested in how immersive education can be used to improve the way the public think about aid, development and what it means to ‘help’.
Ruth will explore how immersive education in Universities and schools can be used to create demand change within the international volunteering industry.
Sarah Adefehinti
Sarah is a self-love & relationship coach who sees self-love as an essential prerequisite of loving others, as we can only give out love if it’s within ourselves first. Sarah believes that great sex & relationships education can lead to better, more meaningful interactions in everyday life with more empathy, truth and better listening; all of which can contribute to a more peaceful world. She is committed to bringing this knowledge to others through thought-provoking workshops and 1 on 1 sessions.
Sarah will ask how she can effectively create and market sex & relationships workshops for adults.
Zahra Davidson
Zahra is co-founder of Enrol Yourself - and is also returning for her second Learning Marathon. She is interested in participatory learning experiences and the role of learning in reaching for sustainability. She is an affiliate of the System Innovation Lab team at Forum for the Future where she has been working on the development of their School of System Change. Before that she was designing, communicating and delivering learning programmes at Year Here and Snook.
Zahra will explore self-mastery, the close relationship between habit and learning, and question whether we have the right to ask humanity to adopt new habits if we cannot change our own.
She is mentored by Beatrice Burks, Director of Delivery at Tinder Foundation and Matthew McStravick, founder of Economy of Hours.
Pilot Participants
Ali Norrish
Ali is a UX researcher and fledgling experience designer, creating empowering learning experiences in campaigns for economic system change. Now designing UX for the Economy with Ecnmy.org and organising playful experiences about what money means. Background in digital learning projects, branding and communications. Keen sweeper and lover of games, greetings card addict.
Ali is exploring how user experience research can contribute to movements for grassroots economic system change. Her mentor is Anna Laycock, Executive Director of the Finance Innovation Lab.
Amal Hmayed
Amal has extensive experience working in the public and private sectors, mainly in the areas of strategy design, organisational development, capacity building and policy reform. She is currently enrolled in the Service Design MA program at the Royal College of Art where she is learning about innovative tools and techniques to create impactful and sustainable solutions that fulfil users’ needs in any sector.
Amal is focusing on how design of learning experiences can engender collective consciousness in young people between 8 and 12 years old. Amal's mentor is Karen Barrett, consultant at UsCreates.
Christopher Watson
Chris is the founder of TESS, the world’s first Zoo School. He has a degree in Zoology from John Moore's University, England, a Master's degree in Evolutionary Biology from Uppsala University, Sweden, and studied toward a PhD in eco-behavioural evolution at the University of Valencia. He has been designing TESS in his head since he was eight years old. Christopher is now building a collective of minds and talent from around the world to make his dream a reality.
Chris is developing a curriculum that will nurture a love of learning, empathy and compassion for nature. Chris's set up a mentor relationship with Mary Curnock Cook, UCAS Chief Executive.
@TESSschools
Clemence Tanzi
Clemence studied law for 6 years, but after completing her masters in London realised she really did not want to be a lawyer. She is now the project coordinator at qLegal, a law clinic for startups and entrepreneurs within Queen Mary University of London. In her spare time, Clem enjoys trying new things, British countryside pubs, surfing, coding, learning Italian and is setting out to develop her own social enterprise.
Clemence is developing and testing a social enterprise which will aim to enhance career and study prospects for young people from disadvantaged backgrounds.
Daniel Ford
Daniel is currently starting an edible insect business Chipper - selling cricket powder as an alternative protein source, which started as a project during his MA in sustainable development with Forum for the Future. He is fascinated by how community organising can lead to behaviour change for sustainable development, and is excited to explore new models of education that further the pursuit of sustainable systems.
Daniel is exploring participative games and gamification as a behaviour change intervention for sustainability. His mentor is David Finnigan, writer, theatre maker and co-founder of Boho Interactive.
Ellie Pritchard
Ellie is a former Year Here fellow and Kingston University graduate, currently working as a visual communication tutor, graphic recorder and designer. For the last year she has been co-ordinating the National Art & Design Saturday Club at Kingston and tutoring on the Art & Design Foundation course.
Ellie is focusing on the accessibility of design within society and how design education can play a part in shaping it.
Fan Sissoko
Fan is a social designer. For the last five years, she has worked at
Innovation Unit, a social enterprise using human-centred design to improve public services in the UK, leading on design research and multimedia storytelling projects. She is now about to set-up her own practice, focusing on what the role of design is in creating more hope and empathy in today's society.
Fan is exploring storytelling as an approach for developing empathy, confidence and capabilities needed for participation in social action. She is creating a podcast which will launch her new design practice.
Laura Billings
Laura is the Business and Community manager at Edspace. She is an expert in systems re-design and platform building. She was previously director of the Civic Systems Lab, leading on The Open Works project to build a demonstration neighbourhood and participatory ecosystem in south London. She is co-founder of Trade School London, a barter based learning cooperative.
Laura has been questioning how her small local business; a micro hotel in Whitechapel, can become a local, community hub within a neighbourhood. She is mentored by Maurice Specht.
Robbie Bates
Robbie is a social designer who is passionate about the power of people, technology and data to positively change the way we live, work and play. He is currently Design Director at design and innovation agency Uscreates, where he focuses on using creative approaches to improve health outcomes and experiences.
Robbie is focusing on building a greater understanding of the interplay between design and business, and he is developing a thought leadership collective for design practice.
Roxana Bacian
Roxana is co-founder of Enrol Yourself. She has 5 years experience of leading service and visual design projects in the UK public and private sectors. Most recently visual designer for FutureGov and previously service designer at Snook, she moved to the UK from Romania 7 years ago to study an MA in Communcation Design.
Roxana is embarking on a career transition and is looking at how she can use movement and performance to explore, express and overcome limiting thinking habits. She is mentored by Jim Ralley, co-founder flux.am and Vanessa Smith, ex-professional dancer and Feldenkrais practitioner.
Tim Ruffles
Tim is a coder who loves to explore data, visual creativity and maths. He shares what he's learned via conference speaking and training other developers. He runs the Functional Javascript and Philosophy Walk meetups.
Tim is exploring how data visualisation can inform debate in the new ‘public square’ of Twitter.
Zahra Davidson
Zahra is co-founder of Enrol Yourself. She is interested in participatory learning experiences and the role of learning in reaching for sustainability. She is part of the System Innovation Lab team at Forum for the Future where she has been working on the development of their School of System Change. Before that she was designing, communicating and delivering learning programmes at Year Here and Snook.
Zahra is developing her ability to design and produce learning products and experiences in response to individual user and wider societal needs - through developing Enrol Yourself. She is mentored by Beatrice Burks, Director of Delivery at Tinder Foundation and Matthew McStravick, founder of Economy of Hours.
@ZahraDavidson