6 Oct 2026
NCAD
5
6 weeks
€600
Design for Climate Action imagines real, positive, and impactful change, generating dynamic and creative concepts to address complex environmental and social challenges resulting from climate change.
This course looks to equip emerging learners with an awareness and understanding of climate change issues and the urgency for meaningful action, while also providing tools, methods, and platforms to influence behavioural, personal, professional, and sectoral change.
Supporting a culture that promotes agency and a shared community ethos that substantively transforms perspective and behaviour towards climate action and responsibility. Learners will undertake a topical, thematic design project with colleagues and creative peers, developed through teamwork, negotiation and collaboration, which leads them to an understanding of how they might shape sustainable collaboration cultures.
National demand for climate-competent creative practitioners is growing rapidly. Ireland’s Creative Green initiative, the Arts Council’s climate action strand, and the increasing mainstreaming of sustainability requirements in public funding applications are creating concrete professional development needs across the creative sector. At a regional level, Dublin and the wider urban context serve as active sites of climate action initiative, driving demand for practitioners with these skills. Nationally, the programme attracts learners from a wide range of creative, design, and sustainability-adjacent backgrounds, with subsidised fee structures extending accessibility.
The programme targets designers, artists, curators, sustainability officers, NGO workers, educators, activists, and creative practitioners across disciplines who wish to develop climate action competencies. It is explicitly transversal, spanning design, fine art, environmental practice, social enterprise, and policy-adjacent roles.
The curriculum has been informed by engagement with leading practitioners and organisations at the forefront of climate action in the arts, including partnerships with environmental bodies, cultural organisations, and public sector climate teams. The inclusion of practical collaborative projects and cross-disciplinary working methods reflects direct input from enterprise needs.
The Professional Certificate in Design for Climate Action develops skills directly aligned with Ireland’s and Europe’s most urgent sectoral priorities. The programme equips participants with an understanding of climate change issues and the design tools, methodologies, and platforms needed to influence behavioural, personal, professional, and sectoral change.
Graduates develop competencies in climate-responsive design thinking, collaborative project development addressing environmental and social challenges, carbon literacy, and the ability to communicate and implement meaningful climate action through creative practice.
These skills are directly applicable in roles across sustainability consultancy, creative industries, public sector climate action teams, NGOs, and enterprise sustainability functions.
The programme supports a transversal skills profile, spanning design, sustainability, enterprise, and civic action areas identified as priorities across multiple national strategies including Ireland’s Climate Action Plan and the EU Green Deal.
There is a fee of €600 for this programme.
Apply via NCAD
Please note if you already have a myncad account you must use that for your application. To reset your password please email itsupport@ncad.ie
CFA coordinator – Joanna Crawley crawleyj@staff.ncad.ie
Admissions Contact
postgraduate@ncad.ie
01 636 4200
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