With over 20 years’ experience in environmental roles, John Thorne joined the Glasgow School of Art as its Sustainability Coordinator in 2013. There is no better place than an art school to both develop circular design principles and to discover practical applications, and John’s work roves across the GSA’s Design, Fine Art, Architecture and Innovation and Technology schools. Key to our development is the psychology behind our social and economic decisions, and our emotional attachment to ourselves, each other and wider Nature. John integrates this by supporting the wellbeing of students. and through their projects, how we can connect the environment with social justice issues to transform our society. Art is critical in this process, forming an emotional link to areas such as race, gender and class, and how they are intertwined with our history, culture and how we design future systems.
Justine Laurent has been working for nine years to transform our business models in line with planetary boundaries and circular economy principles. With a degree in innovation and international business, she helps professionals understand the relationship between their products and services and their ecosystem and build more resource-efficient models that adapt to 21st-century challenges. She offers training, workshops, and strategic consulting. She is the Managing Director of the circular design agency Circulab, which has been supporting companies, communities, and institutions in their circular economy strategies and projects using design methods since 2012. She is a regular speaker and is the academic director of the ESSEC Circular Economy Chair.
