Arts Lab

CATALYST LAB

Catalyst Lab is a space to experiment with design innovation methods as a route to developing new collaborative opportunities for cross-disciplinary working, both within the College and across the University. 

Catalyst Lab emerges from Partnership Catalyst: a unique design-led Knowledge Exchange (KE) infrastructure that seeks to transform the processes by which universities engage non-academic organisations and communities to address urgent real-world challenges.

Partnership Catalyst began as a design-led, partner-driven KE programme that applies new thinking to how the University of Glasgow and the HE sector approach engagement with the wider world. Recognising that partnerships had a tendency to be academic-focused and time-limited due to various funding and project constraints, it was devised to centre and more effectively address sector, partner, and community needs. We wanted to better enable stakeholders to connect and collaborate with academics to identify shared challenges and opportunities towards the co-creation of research-based solutions. 

This core offering has since become an ecosystem of activity enabled by four interlocking ‘pillars’ that seek to maximise the potential reach and significance of our innovative design-led KE: Catalyst R&D (researching and testing new methods, tools, and processes), Catalyst Lab (interdisciplinary horizon-scanning with researchers and research support professionals), Catalyst Core (intersectoral partnership-working, as above), and Catalyst Innovation (our start-up consultancy service).

Catalyst Lab mobilises learning and insights from the team’s delivery of innovative design-led KE to benefit our research culture. Our bespoke tools and processes help identify and forge connections across disciplines and departments, clarify and align goals or challenges, and map varieties of outputs and the steps needed to get there. It enables participants to analyse and take forward either long held but difficult to realise ambitions or discover new ideas or opportunities. It is a space for experimentation, collaboration, and creativity.