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Summer school 2022

Urban farming to foster resilient cities.

During the 2022 summer school, students explored opportunities and transferrable concepts of urban farming to maximise a positive impact on the community at TEDI-London’s home: Canada Water. Their brief was to create solutions that are innovative, feasible and commercially visable, supporting data and insights to:

  • Enabling and maximising participatory urbanism in Canada Water
  • Creating impact for local communities through urban farming
  • Deploying smart technologies
  • Exploring alternative food concepts and associated carbon impacts

Each team designed and developed a solution to support our neighbour, Paper Garden. Summer school 2022 concluded with a Demo Day, where the teams presented their ideas and prototypes to their peers, industry partners, local community members and TEDI-London staff.

The final projects:

Just Project

Just Project

The winning team designed a floating exhibition and cinema to be situated on the water, providing a community hub for the Canada Water area. Powered by solar panels, the solution featured screens made out of plants and an interactive sound system.

Slugs & Co.

Slugs & Co.

This team designed an app for Canada Water's community farmers, which contained helpful features such as meal planning recipes, information on relevant local events and forums where users can trade produce and share advice.

Make it Rain Garden

Make it Rain Garden

The team designed a community garden with systems to minimise water waste. This included self-watering plant pots, which use a sensor to monitor the moisture levels of the soil and automatically water the plants when needed.

Pop Up Oasis

Pop Up Oasis

Hoping to educate the younger generation – alongside their parents and teachers – on what urban farming is and the issues it aims to solve, this team designed a prototype for a food truck which doubles as a portable classroom.

Water Cycle

Water Cycle

This team designed interactive watering systems for community gardens, such as pumps attached to bicycles. They also used sensors to create a traffic light system to indicate when the soil was sufficiently damp for the plant, preventing over-watering.

I-Plant

I-Plant

This team designed interactive teaching tools to help neurodivergent users navigate community gardens and learn about plant growth. This included a robotic assistant, which helps them learn about a particular plant before leading them to it.

Urban farming - what's it all about?

From hydroponics and aeroponics, to LED lighting and water harvesting – learn about the technologies and methods used in urban farming.

Collaborating with industry

Students learnt about the opportunities and transferrable concepts of urban farming and how they could help our neighbour – Global Generation – make a positive impact on the community in Canada Water.  Industry partners JLL and London Grow worked with students to help them understand the factors that contribute to a rise in urban farming and the technologies that enable it.

Hear from our summer school class of 2022

  • “We have really enjoyed having the opportunity to come up with our own solution and seeing how much can be achieved in a short space of time when a group of people come together to accomplish a common goal. It was also very eye-opening to work with a team where each member had a different skillset and disciplinary background – it brings together lots of different perspectives and ideas and we feel that this really shone through in our project work.”

    Kay and Sruti Summer school 2022 students from ASU & UNSW
  • “Being part of TEDI-London’s summer school this year has taught me a lot about engineering design. It was really valuable for me to understand that you need a lot of information about the problem at hand, who it is for and the different resources available before even starting to develop a solution or build a prototype. “

    Alessandro Summer School student, UNSW

Hear from our academics

  • “It has been a joy to support the 2022 summer school at TEDI-London and deliver a workshop on business planning to such a broad range of students. It was really interesting to explore sustainable farming with them and help them understand how marketing and business methods can be applied alongside the engineering methods to produce impactful products and solutions.”

    Professor Keith Straughan TEDI-London Visiting Professor
  • “We chose the focus of this year’s summer school based on the needs of TEDI-London’s surrounding area. With Phase One of British Land’s Canada Water masterplan well underway, we wanted the students to take inspiration and benefit from what is already happening around us. This works both ways, as supporting our students to make a difference doesn’t just start when they graduate. Summer school is also an opportunity for the student teams to have a positive, real-life impact on our local community.”

    Professor Julie Bregulla Summer School Programme Lead & Director of Innovation, TEDI-London.
  • Professor Keith Straughan

Previous summer schools