Through collaborative work with Cornwall Council, this AHRC funded project has produced an in-depth study of the design of secondary school outdoor landscapes linking two areas of research – landscape design and cultural geography. It explores the politics underpinning the design, construction, use and function of the outdoor landscapes of secondary schools in Cornwall, focusing on the extent of active participation of children and young people in these processes. Contemporary research has illustrated that outdoor spaces are essential to the development and wellbeing of young people as they are places in which children can play or have fun whilst they experiment with their identity, learn to socialise and participate in informal education. This thesis examines the role children and young people may have had and their potential in helping to formulate the design and implementation of outdoor spaces, alongside planners, garden designers, teachers and other interested parties. There are three linked aims. • Exploration of the politics underpinning the design, redesign, use and function of the outdoor landscapes of secondary schools. Here, “politics” refer to the complex negotiations between people, practicalities (policy priorities, management) and school strategic vision and ethos (including the role of student voice). • Understand more about the local spatialities of childhood of secondary school age children in order to: i) explain the politics of design; and ii) propose a more nuanced approach to understanding the varying needs and expectations of secondary school-age children. By participatory methods, interviews and observations I was able to note the use and functionality of the grounds by and for pupils, teachers and site managers. • Using an understanding of the politics of design in Cornwall’s secondary schools, and with greater awareness of the spatialities of childhood, develop recommendations for evaluation of secondary school outdoor landscapes via a ‘school’s biography’ approach. While policy-facing literature contemplates the educational function of school spaces in the secondary sector, this research broadens the view of children and young people’s relationship with secondary school outdoor spaces, emphasizing the relationality between groups of children, and children and others. This project proposes work which is attentive to how constructions of childhood are achieved in practice, beyond the contingencies of policy making and educational practices. The extent to which school grounds meet pupils’ needs is a reflection of school ethos and the relative status of children and young people in the decision making process.

This research project operates from the perspective of the author as graphic design practitioner and considers how practice-based visual methods may be used to form a novel system of analysis in graphic design research. The focus of this research is the Conservative Party poster, produced for the British General Elections held between 1979 and 2010. With practice at the core of the research methodology, visual design methods have been configured and applied to a range of material in order to generate insights about how visual language is used in a variety of contexts. The research includes a review of the graphic communication of the British political poster, existing visual methods, and practice-based research within the field of graphic design. From there, a system of practice-based methods was devised, and then applied to the Conservative Party posters. The design system employs methods that disassemble each poster into its individual components (type, image, hierarchy, colour and negative space), mapping each using simple visual techniques, before reassembling these components to identify trends and insights in relation to various political themes. In order to test this design system, these methods were applied to a very different type of visual communication material produced for Sense, a charitable organisation that advocates for the rights of deaf-blind people. This proved valuable to the study, and demonstrated how this system could function in a very different context. The output of this study proposes potential visual devices for aiding visually impaired readers engage with photographic imagery. The findings and visual outputs of this investigation are described in this thesis, and are also housed in a series of three books that form the practice component of this research project. This thesis aims to highlight the value of practice-based methods within graphic design research, and specifically, methods more exclusively available to the graphic design practitioner. Practice is of central importance to this research project, forming the core of the methodology, as well as the outputs produced in response to the research findings. Through establishing the visual characteristics of the Conservative Party poster (1979-2010), this research seeks to demonstrate how a novel system of practice-based methods might help further an understanding of visual communication design.

Architecture and urban design are often powerful expressions of political desires to support and legitimise specific regimes. In many postcolonial cities, architecture and urban design are set out to construct national identity and affirm a political power that departs from the former colonial rule. Architecture and urban design may be used by successive postcolonial regimes to compete with each other to legitimise authority and symbolise power. While such concepts of national identity are established through a constellation of urban forms, national identity is always contested. Places may be used and interpreted in ways that differ from what is intended. Attempts to control the meaning of architecture and built form may conflict with the ways in which spatial practices undermine intended meanings.

Architecture and urban design are often powerful expressions of political desires to support and legitimise specific regimes. In many postcolonial cities, architecture and urban design are set out to construct national identity and affirm a political power that departs from the former colonial rule. Architecture and urban design may be used by successive postcolonial regimes to compete with each other to legitimise authority and symbolise power. While such concepts of national identity are established through a constellation of urban forms, national identity is always contested. Places may be used and interpreted in ways that differ from what is intended. Attempts to control the meaning of architecture and built form may conflict with the ways in which spatial practices undermine intended meanings.

This design project investigates how intersectional feminist politics can be applied to challenge the fast fashion industry in the context of the climate and ecological emergency (CEE). Here fashion is understood as all that we use to visually craft our identities, an expanded conceptualisation that removes the problematic modern-traditional (or Western-Other) binary. The dominant fashion model is contextualised in a global capitalist system driven by an economic growth agenda that is reliant on exploited labour and material throughput surpassing planetary boundaries. During Fashion Revolution Week, the author undertook an action research process to expose the asymmetric relations embedded in fashion systems of provision, and to propose a transition towards non-exploitative relations. The resulting design proposals are intended as an advanced starting point for a systemic re-making of fashion from a holistic sustainability perspective. The author and a small team of colleagues 'stray together' (Mareis and Paim, 2021, p. 21) from traditional design processes, resulting in a series of creative, educational and social events that bring together a community oriented towards change.