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About the Circular Cultures Design School 

The Circular Cultures Design School (CC Design School) is a capacity-building programme for emerging designers, creators, planners, and makers. It serves as a platform for peer learning, collaborative experimentation, and skills development focused on sustainable design and circularity. The design school aims to support creative professionals by fostering critical dialogue and strengthening both their knowledge and practical abilities in circular design practices. 

Organised by the British Council Romania in collaboration with Politehnica University Timișoara and part of the wider Making Matters: Circular Cultures programme, the CC Design School builds on the experience of previous editions held by British Council Greece and Onassis Foundation in Athens. Now, for the first time in Romania, the programme brings its ethos of transdisciplinary learning, sustainable design, and cultural reflection to one of Eastern Europe’s most historically layered industrial cities. 

Inspired by Timișoara’s rich industrial heritage and driven by an urgent need for innovation, the Circular Cultures Design School 2026 becomes a space of convergence: engineers meet designers, cultural workers collaborate with makers, architects, urbanists, and new meanings of circularity are collectively imagined and prototyped. 

Situating industrial heritage in Timișoara 

In Timișoara, the echo of industry has never truly faded. From imperial innovation to socialist production and today's advanced manufacturing ecosystems, the city has long been a catalyst for transformation. Today, as the ideals of Industry 5.0 gain ground — with their focus on sustainability, human-centric automation, and ethical use of technology — Timișoara emerges not only as a repository of industrial memory, but also as a launchpad for the future of work, design, and production 

CC Design School strands 

The first edition focuses on two thematic strands:  

How can we read the traces of the past not as remnants, but as resources? The Community Line explores Timișoara’s industrial heritage — its buildings, its tools, its stories and memories, and the people who shaped them — as fertile ground for new shared spaces and identities. This strand invites emerging designers, architects, urbanists, and cultural professionals to imagine new futures for industrial sites through approaches that encourage communities to collaborate in equitable and meaningful ways. Through hands-on, skills-building workshops and site-specific interventions, participants will learn how to transform forgotten spaces into engines of sustainable transformation, collective imagination, and social cohesion.

Course leader: Grace Crannis

What does Industry 5.0 look like on the factory floor, in the design lab, or even across an entire city’s ecosystem? The Connection Line explores the intersection between emerging technologies and virtuous circular economies. It emphasises human-machine collaboration, AI integration and an industrial (re)design for a circular city that is socially and environmentally harmonious - one capable of nurturing more resilient, circular cultures. 

Targeted at engineering students from diverse disciplines - mechanical, computer, electrical, civil, and transport, this strand invites participants to engage with real-world creative challenges and prototype solutions that bridge technical efficacy with ethical foresight through circular methods that promote ‘social fabric’. Participants will work in teams to imagine and test applications where technology serves not only productivity, but also adaptability, inclusivity, cultural identity and resilience.

Course leaders: Nick Gant & James Tooze

Open call details 

  • Who can apply: Emerging designers, creators, planners, and makers 
    Strand A - Community line: young professionals in design, architecture, urbanism, creative industries, and cultural management;  
    Strand B - Connection line: students in their 3rd or 4th year, master's, or early-stage PhD in engineering fields at Universities in Romania. 
  • Eligibility: Eligible applicants are citizens of Romania or individuals who live and/or work in Romania (permanent or temporary residents).  
  • Period: 23–27 February 2026  
  • Location: Timișoara, ARChA - a flagship space of the Faculty of Architecture and Urban Planning at Politehnica University Timișoara 
  • Participation details: Participation is free. The programme covers travel costs from the selected applicant’s city of residence to Timișoara (train or bus ticket), accommodation in the guesthouse of Politehnica University Timișoara (shared twin rooms) and one meal a day at the canteen of the University. 
  • Language: English is the language we will use for all project working sessions, discussions and materials. 
  • Submission deadline: 18 January 2026 ( 23:59 EET) 

Information 

If you have any questions please contact us at roprojects@britishcouncil.org. 

For full details about this open call, please download the full info-pack provided below. 
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