On Monday 16th June, ABC hosted its first Design Hackathon in the John Hand Room on the All Hallows Campus. The event brought together researchers, educators, and practitioners to co-design meaningful, accessible, and impactful educational solutions to help prevent bullying behaviour, particularly by equipping educators and parents, the key adults who shape children’s social and emotional development.

Led by Dr. Yvonne Crotty and ABC’s Director of Engagement, Darran Heaney, the event began with an introduction on how a hackathon works. Participants were then divided into six teams based on shared research interests. Each team was presented with a real-world bullying scenario and given three hours to “hack” a creative response developing an educational tool or resource to address the issue.

The hackathon followed a Challenge-Based Learning framework and unfolded in three dynamic stages:

• Understanding the Scenario: Teams examined the specific bullying context and shared insights from their own fields.
• Ideation and Prototyping: Drawing from their diverse expertise, teams co-designed a practical solution aimed at schools, parents, or both.
• Presentation and Feedback: Teams pitched their final concepts for constructive feedback and discussion.

The range of outputs demonstrated the creativity of the participants ranging from interactive parent-teacher guides, to scenario-based video resources, to online gaming solutions. All proposals shared a common goal: empowering adults to be more informed and confident in addressing bullying behaviour early and effectively.

On the day, the ABC team were joined by youth facilitators from The Soar Foundation, who deliver preventative programmes in schools, focusing on the well-being of all young people in the secondary school system, primarily those in Transition Year. The hackathon not only showcased the value of interdisciplinary collaboration, but also seeded ideas for future development, implementation and research.