News Story

Design Award and Intangible Cultural Heritage

Monday 17 Mar 2025

An academic in the Design Groupwithin the School of Engineering and Innovation was part of a team that won a Gold H.E. Teaching Award in China. Senior Lecturer in Design, Dr. Clive Hilton, was part of a team of three academics across three Universities [The OU, Hangzhou Normal University (HNU), and Communication University of Zhejiang (CUZ)] that collaborated in a project for Product Design students to design a local coffee shop with a regional identity that also incorporated aspects of Zhejiang’s Intangible Cultural Heritage.

The Award was in recognition of the project’s methodology and the involvement of the students in active research and engagement with Intangible Heritage Practioners. Adopting a constructivist mode of learning, involving grounded research and engagement with coffee shop owners and artesan practitioners, the student’s designs would incorporate artefacts from makers who continue a long tradition of crafts such as indigo dyeing, bamboo weaving, ceramics, seal making and silk printing (among others).

The coffee shops would serve as gallery spaces for these wares, while customers to these shops would be able to purchase them. Subsequent to this project, both CUZ and HNU have expressed interest in continuing the collaboration. Further, Dr Hilton has been asked to be the external consultant in the creation of a new Master’s Course in Product Design at CUZ.