Click the image above to visit Woodland Island

Click the image above to visit Island Infernia

Click the image above to visit Naturama Island

Click the image above to visit Island Metallica

Click the image above to visit Reservoir Island

Please watch the video above that demonstrates how to navigate this resource, and how to drop a pin on the map - this will be important for you to be able to:

• Say 'hello' and share where you are joining us from

• Build your Island of Hope

You can also see alternative ways to drop a pin on the map in this support article.

Our Quilt of Hope Activity will be completed in Miro, however full instructions are provided in the activity introduction.

• Share your hope for the future of education.

• Post one idea you want others to build on.

• What would your island of hope include?

• Share a practice, project, or innovation you’re proud of.

• What change would make learning better for everyone?

• What’s one thing you want to carry forward from today?

And of course, include an image, gif, video or anything visual that represents your Island. You could even record a short video or audio if you prefer.

The purpose of this activity is:

To encourage reflection, connection, and positivity by creating a collaborative digital "quilt of hope" comprising individual patches.

You can watch this short video to see how to complete the activity.

🪵 Q1 (Wood): What new opportunities are you curious to explore in your teaching or leadership?

🔥 Q2 (Fire): What kind of work or learning really energises you—and how does that spark show up in your teaching or professional practice?

🍀 Q3 (Earth): What’s your secret ingredient for creating a sense of stability when everything around you is changing?

🔗 Q4 (Metal): What tools or approaches can help you turn our dreams or hopes into reality? 

💧 Q5 (Water): What have you learned from adapting your practice when circumstances did not go as planned?

🏝️ Q6 (Closing Question): If your professional practice were an island of hope, which of the five elements would it need more of right now, and what could you do to nurture it?

Our team has been organising Islands since 2022 - lovely to have you all visit!

This Island has been created on the basis of the current content by the guests of the Treasure Island Pedagogies podcast series and with the help of GenAI (ChatGPT-Terra 5.6, with enterprise protection) & human-curated by Tunde Varga-Atkins (podcast facilitator) - with credit to all those taking part! Read on...

This Island of Hope is a lively, caring learning commons where people make, tell, test, reflect and rest together. Its most recurrent message is that transformative higher education is neither technology-led nor technique-led: it is purposeful, playful, inclusive and relational, with structures strong enough to support experimentation and spaces calm enough to sustain people.

What the island looks like

At its centre is a communal Learning Campfire: a circular, welcoming space for stories from students, practitioners and communities. Around it are five connected landscapes, not separate territories. Visitors can travel between them as their learning needs change.

1. The Woodlands of Possibility — Wood

A lush, evolving space with a Curiosity Trail, question cards, surprising demonstrations, loose materials, Lego, clay, story cubes and large-scale mapping surfaces. Students and staff make models, test ideas, tell stories, create metaphors and start with questions that have no predetermined answer.

Island invitation: What might we make, ask or try that we have not tried before?

2. The Spark Pavilion — Fire

A bright, social space for enthusiasm and purposeful action. It hosts short provocations, live demonstrations, role-play, games, music and student showcases connected to real clients, professions and social challenges. The pavilion celebrates confidence, courage and the moments when learners realise: ‘I can do this.’

Island invitation: What makes this learning matter enough for us to bring energy to it?

3. The Hearth and Garden — Earth

A calm, accessible centre of care: comfortable seating, a tea point, a communal table, a seed-and-herb garden, quiet participation routes and visible links to student support. Here, dialogue is kind, contributions are valued in different forms, and learning is designed with cultural context, wellbeing and belonging in mind.

Island invitation: What will help everyone feel safe enough to participate, contribute and flourish?

4. The Workshop and Compass House — Metal

A practical studio where hope becomes doable. Visitors find adaptable learning-design templates, feedback loops, reflective prompts, assessment ideas, whiteboards, paper, digital tools and examples of simple technologies used with clear purpose. A ‘tool check’ asks not ‘What is new?’ but ‘What learning work will this help us do?’

Island invitation: What light-touch structures, tools and agreements will help this idea travel into practice?

5. The Tide Pools and Listening Shore — Water

A slower edge of the island for reflection, adaptation and recovery. There are audio stories and podcasts, a listening bench, space for reflective writing, walking routes, and a ‘Try–Learn–Change Direction’ tide chart. Here, plans can be revised, failure can be named without shame and rest is treated as a condition of wisdom.

Island invitation: What is the journey teaching us, and what needs to change, pause or flow differently?

How the island works in practice

• Begin with a story or a question, not a solution. Guests bring a lightbulb moment, a teaching prop or a current knotty challenge.

• Make and test something small. Use playful materials or digital tools to prototype an activity, assessment, prompt or learning environment.

• Invite multiple voices. Build in student, colleague, disciplinary, cultural and professional perspectives; make space for quiet and asynchronous contribution as well as live conversation.

• Connect it to a real purpose. Ask whose problem it addresses, what learners will be able to do, and how they will see its relevance beyond the course.

• Add just enough structure. Leave with an actionable next step, a feedback question and a plan to revisit or adapt the idea.

• Close with restoration. Share a song, a walk, a cup of tea, a reflective postcard or a small moment of celebration—recognising that sustainable innovation depends on people having energy to continue.

On the Treasure Island Pedagogies podcast series, please see more via https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/centre-for-innovation-in-education/podcasts/treasure-island-pedagogies-series/

I created the Little Book of Hope series, which celebrates everyday acts of hope, resilience and human connection. My work explores how hope can be nurtured through relationships, storytelling and community action, and how sharing stories of struggle can support resilience, growth and positive change.

I see hope as both a personal and collective act of agency. In a world where the attention economy often rewards fear and division, I argue that fostering hope, compassion and community can be a powerful form of social and political action.

I serve on the Executive Committee of the Association for the Study of Primary Education (ASPE) and am a National Teaching Fellow, recognised for my commitment to compassionate scholarship and excellence in higher education.

I am looking forward to presenting on Friday and here is my ppt. in case you're interested https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1nuPW6bU5DgYLgf2f5YwJWGEg4GxjrZu4/edit?usp=drive_link&ouid=104215965635466321607&rtpof=true&sd=true

Relationships are the currency of my island because scholarship is fundamentally relational. Knowledge is created through mentorship, collaboration, dialogue and care. We learn with and from one another, and hope flourishes when connection is valued more highly than competition. This is closely linked to my belief that people matter more than perfection. Learning, teaching and research are inevitably messy, and growth often emerges through uncertainty, vulnerability and challenge.

The forests, beaches and waterfalls of the island represent the belief that valuable knowledge exists beyond universities and classrooms. Nature is a teacher, a source of wellbeing and a partner in learning. Practices such as forest bathing and wild swimming encourage reflection, renewal and perspective, reminding us that wisdom can be found in landscapes, communities and lived experiences as well as academic spaces.

The island is also shaped by the five elements: wood (growth), fire (purpose), earth (belonging), metal (achievement) and water (renewal).

Listening sits at the heart of the island. Hopeful scholarship begins by valuing underheard voices and recognising that everyone's stories matter. Hope also grows when people show up for one another through everyday acts of care, encouragement and solidarity. Often, the smallest actions have the greatest impact.

Guided by community, creativity, compassion, curiosity and courage, everyone on the island seeks to leave things better than they found them. It represents the kind of academic community I aspire to build: one where relationships are nurtured, imperfection is welcomed, diverse voices are heard, and hope grows stronger when it is shared.

In addition to my work at the University of Glasgow, I am involved in the Association for Learning Design for Education for Sustainable Development. Sustainable Development Goals and transformative pedagogies are at the heart of this work, engaging learners' heads, hearts and hands to make a positive difference to the world.

Keynote: Stories of Hope: Positioning Hope as Pedagogy, Practice, and Possibility

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1EZwj4pqL6ksGI-YIJZRYXmm6DZtus_IN/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=104053035878523504084&rtpof=true&sd=true

Location: Where in the world/ocean have you placed it?

Created by: Name, role, institution

Element(s): Wood / Fire / Earth / Metal / Water

This island gives hope because...

On this island we value...

Visitors to this island are invited to...

One practice, idea, or resource I’d bring here is...

My Island of Hope is a place where possibility remains open. It is rooted in relationships, warmed by imagination, grounded in care, shaped through critical reflection, and able to adapt as conditions change. Here, people have permission to pause, question, create, collaborate, and imagine otherwise. Hope is not passive optimism, but something we practise and create together—keeping possibility alive, even through uncertain times.

At the heart of the island stands an old stable. Inside are many fine horses: well-fed, glossy-coated and eager to be chosen. Yet, in the darkest corner, visitors may find another horse: thin, tired and overlooked. This is the horse of hidden possibility. Those who pause, look kindly, and offer care will hear it speak.

The horse does not promise an easy road. Instead, it offers wise and unexpected counsel: “Bring me the red coals.” These glowing coals are the challenges that can at first seem too hot to hold: honest feedback, an unfamiliar idea, a failed attempt, a difficult conversation, or the courage to ask for help. With the guidance of educators, peers and mentors (the island’s wise stable-keepers, map-makers and companions) learners discover how to tend these coals safely and use them well.

When the overlooked horse is nourished, it becomes a magnificent five-legged golden stallion riding as fast as lightning.

The monster on this island may take many forms. It may be self-doubt, perfectionism, isolation, fear of failure, or a problem that seems far larger than the traveller. It cannot be defeated by confidence alone. It is overcome through compassion, persistence and the willingness to accept help - and by helping others in turn.

The Five-Legged Horse reminds us that what appears weak, uncertain or unfinished may hold great power. Learning is not a solitary quest, nor is success reserved for those who begin with the strongest voice. With the right nourishment, wise guidance and companions alongside us, we can become ready for journeys we once believed impossible.

On this island, no one has to slay their monster alone.

Island-hopping Questions:

How does this island resonate with you? Any anecdotes you may have about something similar from your practice as an educator, or yourself as a learner? Or anything else that you think this island may also need?

See the animated version of the full tale by Marcell Jankovics on YouTube [with English subtitles]. It is striking how much fairy/folk tales draw on the five phases and elements (fire, water etc.) - and which look especially powerful in the visual interpretation by Marcell Jankovics.

Acknowledgements: Drafted by Tunde, then enhanced with the assistance by ChatGPT 5.6 Terrato match the style of Islands.

On this island hope emerges not from some imagined or idealised future, but from our active presence in the present. This island values free-thinking, solidarity, courage, resistance, and trust. Visitors to this island are invited to care courageously and to seek justice in the face of injustice. Here hope is a call to action, not a burden of optimism nor an expectation.

All the beaches are dog-friendly too 🐕

Link to the Padlet Activity: Contemplative Creation

One idea I want others to build on … now more than ever digital wellbeing is a crucial - and in my opinion overlooked - element of the student learning experience.  Wellbeing - non-digital and digital - should be designed for in the programme/course design process.

My island of hope … would include communal areas where islanders can convene - talk, share ideas, knowledge and experience - but it would also have private secluded areas where islanders can reflect, think and formulate ideas.  There will also be areas for games, fun activities and team-based activities.

A change that will make learning better for everyone … is more kindness, more empathy, and more consideration for the human-side of life.  Everyone is on their own journey - with their own struggles - so we should appreciate this and give support and guidance and we will get through it together.

One things to carry from today … is that there are good people world-wide trying to make a difference and positive impact on the student experience, and indeed the world.  We can't lose sight of that.

My island is not far off the coast in Sunderland, it is a place where thoughts are valued and listened to. Discussions are encouraged.