A Hackathon to give the gift of clean water…
This month Post-Grad Community teamed up with international non-profit organisation WaterAid and LCC's MA Design Management and Cultures students to help save lives by giving the gift of clean water.
Postgraduate students across UAL gathered to take part in a two-day Hackathon, visiting WaterAids headquarters for talks and challenges delivered by WaterAid; an international development charity working in 34 countries across the world, working to transform millions of lives every year by improving access to clean water.
The Hackathon explored the potential of the arts as a means to achieve development goals, asking how and in what way the arts can best be used as a tool in the mission to make clean water, decent toilets and good hygiene normal for everyone, and ultimately build stronger, more sustainable communities.
Over the two days, 50 students worked in transdisciplinary teams to solve the problem proposed by WaterAid, starting at their HQ in Vauxhall. From here, each team began develop ideas into prototype artworks, objects, inventions or interfaces that harness WaterAids mission.
By the end of day 2, each team presented their idea to a panel of industry experts from WaterAid and a winning group were selected. We will be catching-up with the winning team soon to share their winning pitch!
The 2-day event provided an insight into the creative processes at WaterAid and how UAL students can help implement their mission to achieve lasting development goals.
Each team tackled one of the following briefs:
Brief 1 - Menstrual Hygiene Digital Engagement
Design a digital engagement campaign that makes the global stigma around women on their period a personally-relevant topic for a key audience, inspiring that audience to amplify our key messages on Menstrual Hygiene Day 2019.
Brief 2 - Empowering Women’s Groups in India
Channel your business skills and propose a model to scale up women’s groups to turn a profit and offer a range of services, including water quality testing.
Brief 3 - Climate Change
Design a digital engagement campaign that makes the links between climate change, water and sanitation a personally-relevant topic for a key audience, inspiring that audience to amplify our key messages ahead of global leaders meeting at the United Nations in 2019 to discuss urgent climate action.
Gallery
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Wateraid Hackathon - Winning Team
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Hackathon day 1
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Hackathon day 2 experimentation
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Bloody Mary's Presentation
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Hackathon day 2
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WaterAid Panel
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Presentation at WaterAid Hackathon
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How was the Hackathon for you?
"Getting to be involved in a live brief tackling a big problem like climate change which is very important to me."
"The collaboration with people from other courses was great! It was nice to visit the WaterAid office and understand the practical relevance of the topics we worked on for them. It was good to have mentors for questions."
"I signed up last minute, not having much expectation for the group work. But it was so good, I think it was wall organised and well put together, which definitely fed into the group work. All the experts were very supportive and helpful."
