Creativity Moves: transdisciplinary practice in action at CSM

Creative translation and a shared ecosystem

Professor Kayoko Nohara, STADHI director,described this partnership as rooted in ‘creative translation’ - a practice that moves beyond language to operate across disciplines, cultures and forms of knowledge. Rather than reproducing meaning, creative translation re-articulates it. It embraces friction, difference and even discomfort as necessary conditions for learning and innovation.

Over nearly a decade, this collaboration has grown into a transdisciplinary ecosystem encompassing design projects, residencies, academic research and industry engagement -

With the Institute of Science Tokyo’s recent designation within Japan’s Universities for International Research Excellence (UREx) programme, and the launch of its Visionary Initiatives — a vision-led, cross-disciplinary framework designed to integrate education, research, and societal application, the partnership is entering a new, more expansive phase, opening up significant opportunities for deeper collaboration, experimentation, and impact.

Student collaboration and exchange

Alongside staff-led sessions, MA Industrial Design students played a central role in the exchange, engaging directly with their counterparts from Tokyo and industry partners.

Jesús Felipe Querol reflected on the significance of this interaction: “What felt most rewarding was seeing our students confidently positioning themselves as designers who can actively contribute to projects being developed by Tokyo’s students in the knowledge exchange context of Hybrid Innovation.”

For the students themselves, the experience was both creatively and culturally generative. Elizabeth Maggio-Kotkowska highlighted the challenge and richness of communicating across languages while tackling complex global issues, while Lara Potma noted how live translation shaped a “unique exchange” that deepened the collaboration.

Rafi Shaikh reflected on the encounter as an opportunity to see familiar design questions reframed through fresh perspectives: "engaging with speculative approaches to wellbeing that challenged conventional methods and opened new directions for his own practice".

Building futures through practice

Creativity Moves ultimately demonstrated that transdisciplinary collaboration is not a fixed model but an ongoing practice - one that requires time, trust and a willingness to remain open to uncertainty.

By foregrounding workshops, embodied inquiry and student exchange, the event made visible the processes that underpin meaningful collaboration between disciplines, institutions and cultures.

As this partnership continues to evolve, it offers a compelling model for how design education can respond to increasingly complex global challenges: not by simplifying them, but by creating the conditions to think and make across differences.

Danielle Knight, Knowledge Exchange Manager, expanded this conversation by situating creativity within CSM’s wider ecosystem of partnerships:

“We work with local laboratories, charities and community hubs, national forests and museums and build international research and innovation networks shaping the future of craft, hospital design and the footwear industry. Everyone we work with has valuable insights to share based on their own lived experience.”

For Dr Betti Marenko, Reader in Design and Techno-Digital Futures and organiser of the event, the workshop format was essential.

“At a moment when ‘transdisciplinarity’ is often invoked as a buzzword, it felt vital to show what it actually looks like in practice: slow, negotiated, sometimes messy, always relational.”

Rather than seeking alignment, the event created a “charged space of encounter” where difference was not smoothed over but actively worked through. This approach reflects a broader ethos within CSM - one that values process, trust and complexity over speed or easy resolution.