MANIFESTO

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Are you curious for more? Would you like to get in touch? Feel free to contact our lead directly for any questions or inquiries you may have. tikvah@studioblended.com

1. 

From rest and an organic way of life come our strength, calm, humanity, health, simplicity, balance and enjoyment of the work on good and resilient (climate/urban) curricula.

We set out to enjoy our very own day in our very own lives –
and long to enable clients and teachers/trainers to do the same.

We are fresh, innovative, strategic – instead of ad hoc - and sustainable.

2.

We believe in working in an interdisciplinary and even transdisciplinary (involving art) way, with experts who are both really good at what they do and are wonderful to work with.

We don’t employ experts and artists, as we want to remain lean as a studio. This way we are always  able to form an optimal agile team around a client and assignment, and context.

We do operate as a collective. Our disciplines, backgrounds and personalities are compatible, and we are already used to working together.

3.

We move lightly between people, governments, companies and institutions and follow the seasons as natural time demarcations of project cycles and contracts.

We love that natural rhythm to the season.

We realign per season what makes sense to take up and have our undivided attention for.

4.

We love to work in a way that allows us to give our undivided attention to the work. Be engaged - fully present, with the people, the team, the work. Which is why we only take on one large project per season.

We believe in doing things well – simply for the sake of creating something good.

5.

We only work on technical matters, in bespoke assignments for clients.

We don’t work in generic ways on education - we always speak right into your technical (interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary) climate or urban field.

To us, technical and human reslience are two sides of the same coin and should be realised in a systemic and structural - not ad hoc - way.

6.

Resilience is at the heart of our work – both as humans, professionals and for the technical work.

This leads us to ensure a healthy golden triangle of quality, time and cost investment, and to equally design courses/trainings in such a way that they last up to a decade, whilst teachers become more resilient too.

7.

Good education involves a blended approach to teaching / training – the thoughtful combination of face to face and online delivery.

It is also about the new meaning and value of face to face time for pedagogy - as absolute premium time. Which is why we continue to experiment and innovate with ‘live’ time from a pedagogical angle.

The blend that makes sense varies for every individual context, and even for the one leading the delivery of a course, training or degree.

Our response is therefore a highly personalized, uniquely tailored approach.

8.

We look at technology through a pedagogical lens and design greenfully.

We care deeply about the environment, and continue to grow in awareness about the carbon costs of technology. Which is why we design for simplicity.

9.

We see a continuum between capacity development of university teachers, and of trainers of professionals. Making science actionable, and infusing practice with research.

You see these cross-linkeages reflected in all our approaches.

We can be both high level and conceptual, and grounded and practical - anchoring in a given reality and context.

We have a broad technical professional network with experts we can consult as necessary.

10.

We consciously do not speak of capacity building, but of capacity development, as a two way direction.

We are always creating opportunities and possibilities for this dialogue and exchange in our capacity development implementation.

When it comes to blended design, we strongly believe in continuous professionalisation on the job, as an educational professional runs into design challenges or other structural issues.

11.

We are well versed with ‘fit for purpose’ approaches, designing, developing and advising on the delivery of pilots and their consolidation. 

Incrementality, rolling-wave, open-building, and modular are our signature strengths.

12.

We come alongside a client, and operate as equal partners throughout the project duration.

Our senior advisors expect to have an equal partner relationship with the client’s main focal point (i.e. a coordinator), whereby client and advisor work together, a combination of the advisor’s specialist knowledge with relevant knowledge about the content, the organisation and access to the relevant departments.

Shared responsibility and joint decision making for the sake of ownership, allow the success and relevance of the identified outcomes and outputs.

13.

We care about the human connection with our clients, and always look to the long-term in the relationship. Consistency and an organic, open communication are important to us.

In fact, continuity and trust are an important motivation for being a foundation in the first place, which can carry through professional relationships and even friendships, throught time, regardless of project endings.

We let things come to us, and connect the right people, when the time is right.

14.

We focus first and foremost on independent senior advise on curriculum design, at the drawing table, because this relates to a structural part of a coordinator’s own human resilience and the technical resilience of their course or degree.

From there, flow other aspects of design and development as well.

We do not engage in delivery of client’s curricula. We do train ourselves.

15.

We love how finance can bring clarity, health and simplicity. We aim to have accountability, transparency, ensure honest prices for true value of qualitative expertise and products, and ensure sound financial expertise and reliability.

16.

Matter matters. We love to make things concrete.

We are flexible in our range of deliverables, from inventiveness with the ordinary solutions, to the beauty of simplicity in corporate, elegant, and even artistic end products.

We are here especially for you as unique professional, to come alongside you and partner with you, as you work on a (climate / urban) curriculum, so that you can offer good and resilient education in all simplicity.