PlastIC By The Sea – Learning through play
The PlastIC Research Centre recently took part in Bournemouth’s Arts by the Sea Festival alongside AUB’s marketing team and PhD student Alice Stevens, marking the centre’s first major public engagement event since launching earlier this year.
Working in collaboration with Circular11, the team delivered a hands-on workshop designed primarily for children aged around five to thirteen, though plenty of parents joined in as well. The activity encouraged visitors to think more critically about plastics and their role in everyday life through a form of visual play.
Children were asked to answer two questions using different materials. First, they used Lego to represent something they believed was negative about plastic. Then, using cleaned, colourful litter collected from Bournemouth Beach, they created something they felt was positive about plastic. Afterwards, participants reflected on the experience; particularly how easy it was to build with Lego compared to the challenges of working with reclaimed plastic waste.
The exercise was designed to encourage deeper conversations around sustainability and to move beyond the idea that plastic is simply “good” or “bad”. By reversing expectations, using new plastic toys to depict environmental problems and discarded plastics to represent solutions, the workshop encouraged children to think more carefully about reuse, material value, and the complexities of environmental decision-making.
The creative responses from participants were often imaginative, surprising, and sometimes unsettling in the best possible way. One child, for example, created a Lego figure with an extended black throat to symbolise choking on plastic pollution. These abstract visual responses became powerful conversation starters and demonstrated how effective play-based learning can be across different ages and communication styles.
Self-Portrait with Pollution, Local Dorset Child, 2025
Alongside the children’s activities, members of the PlastIC Research Centre team spoke with parents, local residents, artists, and festivalgoers throughout the weekend, helping introduce the newly launched research centre to the wider community.
Circular11 also ran their own activity during the event, teaching children about recycling processes and how to identify hard-to-recycle plastics. Their volunteer beach-cleaning initiatives supplied many of the reclaimed materials used during the workshops, including colourful plastics and lost toys that proved particularly engaging for younger participants.
Reflecting on the event afterwards, the team described it as an exciting first step in building long-term relationships with the local community.
Oli Moore, Research Centre Office shared “The PlastIC Research Centre only launched this January, and we were really excited to be engaging with our local community for the first time – it’s such an essential aspect of our endeavour as a newly forming research institute. It’s the beginning of a relationship where we get to show the public everything that we’re working toward, producing, or having an impact upon!”
Overall, the festival was a significant success for the centre and offered a valuable test run for future outreach ambitions, including potential workshop programmes and educational activities for local schools as the institute continues to grow.