Course units
The course is fully in-person and structured across three integrated blocks over one academic year. Learning is cumulative, with each unit building on the previous, supporting a progression from foundational understanding to applied, situated practice. Across five units, students develop from interpreting living systems, to working within systems, to acting as a regenerative practitioner.
Block 1 builds foundational ecological and systems knowledge
Block 2 develops collaborative and real-world practice
Block 3 focuses on synthesis through an independent regenerative project
Block 1: Design for Life
From Knowledge to Imagination
This foundational block introduces the principles, frameworks, and approaches of working with living systems. Through Units 1 and 2, students combine theory and practice to develop ecological literacy, systems practice and field-based learning in order to develop regenerative design approaches.
Unit 1: Living Systems Principles
Students develop ecological intelligence by learning to read, interpret, and understand living systems. Through scientific frameworks, fieldwork, and critical reflection, the unit builds foundational knowledge of ecological processes, climate systems, and more-than-human relations, establishing a basis for responsible multispecies design practice.
Unit 2: Multispecies Lab
Running alongside Unit 1, students learn to actively imagine, question, and intervene within complex systems, expanding how we understand multispecies futures. Through systems thinking, fieldwork, and multispecies methodologies, the unit positions regenerative design as a practice for engaging with uncertainty, and real-world ecological and social complexity.
Block 2: Living Systems Collaborations
From Imagination to Collaboration
This block centres collaboration, interdisciplinary exchange, and real-world engagement. Through Units 3 and 4, students work across local and global networks, disciplines, and contexts to develop relational approaches to regenerative design.
Unit 3: The Collaborative Unit
Moving from individual and knowledge based work, this unit introduces collaboration as a critical mode of practice. Students build collaborative and interdisciplinary practices with another CSM postgraduate course to address planetary challenges. Working across courses and disciplines, the unit explores collective agency, shared knowledge, and the role of design in fostering social and ecological well-being.
Unit 4: Hybrid Research Station
Running partly alongside Unit 3, this unit builds on questions of collaboration by focusing on how collaborative practice operates within real-world conditions and live contexts. Students engage directly with real-world contexts through live projects and external partnerships. This unit centres place-based practice, relational intelligence and development of applied skills in working with external partners, translating research into live outcomes, and operating within professional contexts.
Block 3: Activated Ecologies
From Collaboration to Activation
The final block focuses on synthesis and independent development of practice. Students consolidate their learning into a fully realised regenerative design project, integrating ecological, systems, and relational intelligence.
Unit 5: Design for Regenerative Futures
Students are expected to operate as emerging practitioners, building sustained networks, external collaborations, and site-based partnerships that extend beyond the course. This supports the transition from student work to independent professional engagement in ecological and social contexts. Students develop their self-directed, practice-based project grounded in real contexts, demonstrating authorship, co-evolution, regenerative governance and the ability to work within living systems communities.
CSM Academic Support is delivered by a team of academics and practitioners working alongside your course to help you progress and achieve your maximum potential as a student. Academic Support can help you to develop your skills in different areas, including critical thinking, research and writing, time management, presentations and working independently and collaboratively. These may be offered as part of your timetabled classes or as bookable tutorials and workshops.
Mode of study
The course is offered in full-time mode which runs for 45 weeks over 12 months. You will be expected to commit 40 hours per week to study, which includes teaching time and independent study.
Credit and award requirements
The course is credit-rated at 180 credits. On successfully completing the course, you will gain a Master of Arts (MA degree). Under the Framework for Higher Education Qualifications, an MA is Level 7. All units must be passed in order to achieve the MA but the classification of the award is derived from the mark for the final unit only.
If you are unable to continue on the course, a Postgraduate Certificate (PG Cert) will normally be offered following the successful completion of 60 credits, or a Postgraduate Diploma (PG Dip) following the successful completion of 120 credits.
