MAKING DESIGN CIRCULAR – THAT'S OUR MISSION
Making Design Circular is a membership community and learning platform empowering defiantly hopeful founders to make imperfect progress towards genuine circularity
From the author of Wasted: When Trash Becomes Treasure (2020) and Broken: Mending and Repair in a Throwaway World (2023), Katie Treggiden.
Introducing Making Design Circular
Design is about solving problems and the environmental crisis is the biggest challenge of our lifetimes. The suits have cracked the science and the tech – what’s needed now is a creative approach.
Making Design Circular exists to empower defiantly hopeful founders to play their part in bringing about a circular economy in the craft and design industries, starting in their own businesses.
Bringing together head, heart and hand knowledge in a unique framework, we cover the thinking and feeling as well as the doing, and provide support for every step of the journey.
The PATH TO SUSTAINABILITY
The backbone of the Making Design Circular membership is our unique 5-stage Path to Sustainability. It is designed to take the overwhelm and confusion out of your environmental journey, so you can take it one step at a time.
Based on the Ellen MacArthur Foundation definition of a circular economy and interviews with hundreds of founders of making-based businesses, I have taken all the actions you might want to take to become fully circular and put them in an order – not the only order, but a pretty sensible one!
Wherever you are on your path – whether you are an Acorn, Seedling, Sapling, Tree or Forest – we will meet you where you are. All you have to do is take the next step – whether that’s sorting out your packaging or getting B Corp certified.
And everything is based on a powerful methodology that empowers you to feel good, do good and make good money.
Courses
Dip a toe in with a self-paced short-course – created by Katie Treggiden together with guest experts to support various stages of the Path to Sustainability – and start making imperfect progress towards your environmental goals.
Community
Join the Making Design Circular membership for support along every step of your own personal Path to Sustainability together with all the courses, coaching and community you need to get all the way to ‘Forest’.
Coaching
Invest in 1:1 coaching and get calm, clear and confident about your own Path to Sustainability. Katie Treggiden is a certified, nature-informed coach who empowers purpose-driven founders to make decisions that align with their values and work for their lives and businesses.
The Head, Heart, Hand Approach
The Making Design Circular approach is unique because it combines head, heart and hand skills and most courses include an element of each.
The membership includes all three in bucket-loads and we’ve flagged up which courses lean predominantly into which skills, so you’ll see an icon that tells you whether you’ll be using your brain to think things through (head skills), whether a course is informed by coaching techniques and there’s likely to be some soul searching required (heart skills), or whether you’ll have the opportunity to learn new making techniques (hand skills).
Head
These courses are information-based and you’ll be using your brain to reason things through and apply new knowledge to your creative practice.
Heart
These courses are informed by coaching techniques and will require introspection and soul-searching to find the answers within yourself.
Hand
These courses offer the chance to learn new techniques and skills and to translate all that head and heart knowledge into your making practice.
What would you like to learn?
How to Fund Your Environmental Design Projects
How to Speak the Language of the Circular Economy
We’re not here to waste your time or ours.
That’s why we offer a direct, no-nonsense money-back guarantee on all our short-courses – and allow you to cancel your membership at any time, simply by giving us three working days notice before your next payment is due.
Our goal? Imperfect progress towards genuine circularity and no regrets.
All Access Membership
SUSTAINABILITY MADE SIMPLE.
Access to our unique Path to Sustainability and support along every step with coaching, co-working, accountability and more.
- Unlimited access to all courses and resources
- Expert instructors in business, craft and sustainability
- Gentle accountability every month to help you progress
Cancel anytime with 3 working days notice.
Katie Treggiden in the press...
Forbes
Monocle 24
FT How to Spend It
The Observer
Dezeen
Hole & Corner
House & Garden
Design Milk
Crafts Magazine
ICON
About
Katie Treggiden
Katie Treggiden is a purpose-driven writer and keynote speaker championing a circular approach to design – because Planet Earth needs better stories.
She is currently exploring the question ‘can craft save the world?’ through an emerging body of work that includes her sixth book, Broken: Mending and Repair in a Throwaway World (Ludion, 2023), and a podcast, Circular with Katie Treggiden.
With 20 years’ experience in the creative industries, she regularly contributes to publications such as The Guardian, Crafts Magazine, Design Milk, Dezeen and Monocle24. She has launched, edited and published an award-winning design blog and an independent print magazine.
She recently gained a distinction for her Master’s Degree in the History of Design from the University of Oxford. She was the founder and first president of Bloom and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.
Podcast
Making Design Circular with Katie Treggiden is a podcast exploring the nuances, complexities and mindset shifts we all need to embrace to move towards a more circular and regenerative economy – seen through the lens of craft and design. Most of us know what to do to become more environmentally responsible, it’s the “how to be” part of the conversation that, until now, has been missing. Exploring themes such as perfectionism, values-aligned decision-making, and the role of playful experimentation in solving a very serious problem, Katie’s is a rare and hopeful voice that cuts through the noise.