External Education
Jump to
Our External Education programme offers bespoke courses, workshops and modules in three areas: Inclusive Design, Design Thinking and Creative Leadership. We offer training, teaching and professional development for business, government, academia and the third sector.
Our External Education offer builds on learnings from 300 projects completed to date. We do not just teach theory - we enable practice.
Our people-centred strategies for innovation are based on 29 years of experience.
Our teaching and delivery has impacted individuals, entrepreneurs, small and medium enterprises, as well as social and academic institutions.
We work with designers and non-designers alike to grow your own creative power.
We enable the creative processes of Inclusive Design, Design Thinking and Creative Leadership to be democratised, co-opted and applied to you.
We can help you solve critical problems and issues in an innovative, holistic and human-centred way.
Inclusive Design and Creative Leadership workshop for Newton Business School, Adam Hollingworth (July 2019)
Engagements are tailor-made and can last from two hours to two weeks. Examples include:
- Bespoke courses for organisations, companies and governments
- Open Masterclasses and short courses at the Royal College of Art
- Design sprints combining capacity building and design ideation based on a client brief
- Personal upskilling and professional development training
- Teaching modules and guest lectures for academia, industry and non-profit organisations
Inclusive Design
This programme builds on ideas in a book created with Onny Eikhaug from Innovation for All AS. Entitled Innovating with People: the Business of Inclusive Design, it was written as an low-threshold, high-information manual for Inclusive Design. Topics covered include:
- Inclusive Design: benefits of the approach
- Inclusive Architecture: enabling a people-centred focus
- Tools and methods: that can be used the next day
- Design process: making yours more creative and inclusive
- Case studies: drawn from around the world
“We learnt different ways to see, define and tackle problems, and understood different meanings for innovation. We appreciated the creative and innovation side offered by the RCA, and different ways of doing business.”
Design Thinking
At the heart of the HHCD’s Design Thinking approach is a people-centred focus, driven by Inclusive Design and design ethnography. We have created five Design Thinking principles that are unique to our practice and teaching: Involve People, Translate Design Thinking into Design Doing, Create Value and Capture Value, Follow the Arc of Design Thinking and Navigate Complexity.
The Arc of Design Thinking (copyright: HHCD)
“We want people to come away from our executive education courses with achievable insights and a critical path to making change in their organisations and to their own individual working lives.”
RCA Design Thinking workshop expert
“Highly relevant for anyone looking for more effective ways to solve innovation challenges. The main takeaways were the power of visualisation & importance of empathy and research.”
Digital Transformation Lead At Shell, March 2019
Join the next RCA Design Thinking & Innovation Executive Masterclass led by Professor Jeremy Myerson.
Creative Leadership
Leadership has to become more diverse, empathic and enabling. We need creatives who are leaders and leaders who are creative. Alongside Design Thinking and Inclusive Design delivery and training, we have a decade of research and teaching in Creative Leadership. We have denied three qualities that every 21st century leader needs. OUr courses are for emerging leaders, established leaders, and anyone who was never encouraged to be a leader.
At the heart of our courses are some simple, yet innovative ideas:
- Everyone has leadership potential
- Creativity is a universal ability to develop solutions that positively impact ourselves and others
- Empathy is the hallmark of a 21st century leader
- Clarity is the missing link in aligning vision, direction, and communication.
“90 per cent of individuals and organisations included in RCA research recognise and accept the core Creative Leadership attributes – empathy, clarity and creativity – as baseline operational and leadership values in our Fourth Industrial Revolution world.”
Director, The Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design
“By taking the course, I learnt a whole new concept of Creative Leadership and how it can be applied to my daily work and life.”
Hong Kong Civil Service Bureau, 2018
Join the next RCA Creative Leadership Executive Masterclass led by HHCD Director Rama Gheerawo.
How we work
Modules balance teaching blocks and lectures with experiential elements and immersive experiences that can be delivered both on- and offline.
Programme teams are drawn from senior staff at The Helen Hamlyn Centre and wider RCA-cohort, as well as highly skilled subject experts from the Centre’s global network.
Our clients
The HHCD have run a number of External Education workshops over the last decade globally. A selection includes:
- Hong Kong Civil Service Bureau: Over 700 civil servant trained with the HOng Kong Design Centre
- Kinnarps (Sweden): taster workshop in Design Thinking
- Stannah (UK): workshop for senior managers and change-makers across the company. Stannah launched their first App as a result
- Bespoke Innovation Design programmes for Panasonic hosted at The Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design to Upskilling company designers in methods and processes
- Yearly intensive executive education training for fashion brand directors from Newton Business School, University of Shanghai, China.
Staff
Ask a question
Get in touch to discuss your Inclusive Design, Design Thinking and Creative Leadership training and professional development needs.
hhcd@rca.ac.uk
