M.Sc. Honour’s Programme Excursion to the 2026 Dutch Design Week

Nice to meet you!

Hey everyone, I’m Jasmin, one of the new authors of this blog. I come from Germany and Thailand, and my favourite colour is yellow. I recently started my M.Sc. in Climate Studies and am in the Honour’s Programme and the Sustainable Development Diplomacy track. Please feel free to be in touch in the comments. I’m happy to answer any questions or consider your article ideas. I’m looking forward to bringing you all the latest news around campus 😉

If you are unfamiliar with WUR’s Honours Programme, please read the section below. If you are just here for the Dutch Design Week Excursion review, feel free to skip to the section after it.

 

The Honour’s Programme

If you enjoy a good challenge, lots of excursions, and networking, you’re likely one of the ambitious students interested in joining WUR’s Honours Programme. It’s an extracurricular programme (30 ECTs for Bachelor students, 15 for Master students) that aims to empower students to work in a multicultural and interdisciplinary setting. Together with your peers, you work on sustainability challenges and are given workshops to further develop your interests and talents both within your respective disciplines and beyond.

Upon completion, you will of course receive a certificate alongside your degree. While there are many reasons to join the Honours Programme, having it on your CV is certainly not a bad a motivation. It’s a good way to show future employers that you are a motivated, hardworking and curious individual.

Bachelor’s Programme Structure

The Bachelor’s Honours Programme is structured into three categories: The Honours Impact Group, Personal Growth & Leadership, and the Deep Dive Assignments. 

During the Honours Impact Group (HIP), students form interdisciplinary teams to produce a self-defined product (e.g. a podcast, fairytale or documentary) for a theme chosen by the expert supervisors. The themes are related to WUR’s mission and tend to therefore be very sustainability-oriented. For example, a theme could be on sustainable value chains or the water cycle.

As for the Personal Growth & Leadership sessions, there are masterclasses and assignments for you to learn more about yourself, what good leadership is, and what it means to be authentic.

Lastly, during the Deep Dive Assignments you undertake an extra assignment from one of the coordinators in your Bachelor’s to deepen your knowledge in your field. It’s a good way to communicate directly with a professor and learn from them one-on-one.

Master’s Programme Structure

The Master’s Programme has a similar structure. Just like with the Bachelor’s version, you join a HIP group. This year we were offered five topics and we had to indicate our top 3 picks. Luckily enough, I got my first choice which was focusing on sustainable value chains and waste reduction in the Efteling! I chose it because I like the idea of working with an external commissioner and getting to know the private sector more as my previous internship experiences have all been with non-profit organisations. Plus, I’ve never been to the Efteling before and getting to go there for free for meetings (and some rides afterwards) was a very compelling idea.

Instead of Personal Growth & Leadership sessions, we have something called the Art of Living and Leadership Labs which is in essence the same thing. The focus is on ‘how do I want to live’, ‘what are my values’ and ‘what inspires me’? I have some uncertainties in my life, like whether I want to work in Europe or another part of the world one day, or whether I want to stay in the humanitarian sector or pursue diplomacy more. I hope that by discussing these things with my peers and the teachers, I’ll gain more clarity.

Finally, we have the Emerging Issues category, wherein the Honours team jointly decides on issues related to the Sustainable Development Goals to delve deeper into. Afterwards, the Honours staff arrange relevant guest speakers and excursions for us. Out of all the reasons for joining the Honours Programme, this is probably my biggest one. I love excursions and guest lectures because they’re such a fun way to learn outside of your classrooms. In addition to that, all excursion costs are covered by WUR so you don’t have to worry about your budget.

2026 Dutch Design Week

Every year, designers across the Netherlands gather around to display their innovative designs that are either artistic, or practical solutions for contemporary problems. This year’s Dutch Design Week (DDW) was hosted in Eindhoven from the 17th to the 25th of October. The theme was R.A.W. – Rebel, Authentic Worth. According to their website (2o26), this theme introduced “unpolished, exploratory and experimental” exhibitions.

Our Excursion

The Honours Programme regularly visits the DDW for students to gain inspiration for their own products for HIP. In fact, a group from the 2025 M.Sc. Honours cohort had a stand of their own this year, focusing on sustainable textiles. They were our very first stop on the excursion. Joining us were Yasmine Azafzaf and Ali Slimi as representatives of the sustainable textiles HIP team. They introduced us to their project, Dye or Die.  Other members of the team include Marieke Badier, Annisa Islamiati, Vedant Bhargava, and Christiaan Hanekom.

 

In collaboration with Grebbeveld Schapen and Ilanga Studio, they transformed sheep wool into a collaborative textile art work. The wool was first dyed with natural pigments derived from onion peels, and later on knitted together by students into a quilt. The entire process was turned into a documentary.

Yasmine recounted how special it was to hear the group quieten down and therapeutically knit together. The team has already agreed to take turns having the quilt, even once they graduate and go home. From Netherlands to Indonesia, the quilt will be seeing a whole lot of the world. This sounds awfully familiar – is anyone else thinking of the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants right now?

It is indeed inspiring seeing how a HIP group managed to create such a thoughtful product and even present it at a space like the DDW. They received ample encourage and support in the process by their superviser and the Honours community. Who knows, I wonder if my team’s product will exhibited at the DDW next year too. Would you want to join the Honours programme and work towards an exhibition at the DDW?

But the excursion didn’t end there. The DDW had exhibitions across the town. Our bus took us to the main hall where we saw more interesting designs, some of which were by WUR students. It’s always a treat to see how well our university is doing in diverse settings. It makes me want to get creative myself to also take part in something that stands out. I want to be able to go, “Mom! Look, they’re displaying my team’s product here!”

Aside from WUR, other universities, groups and independent artists were there. The designs that stood out to me the most were:  1. 3D printed coral reefs to support their regrowth, 2. colourful stairs that light up as a game to encourage young patients to practice walking in hospitals (for physiotherapy), and 3. a participatory outdoor station where visitors could write down and hang up slips of fabric based on different prompts. I think the first two are such smart ideas that could have a real impact. As for the last one, I enjoyed reading the different fabric pieces and learning more about the strangers around me. It made me feel very connected to them despite never having met them.

Final Verdict

This must sound like a lot. In reality, we actually had ample free time to walk around the different stations at our own pace. My friends and I decided to follow a route through the city centre. We visited the Philipps Museum and tried out a café. On the way back we stopped for poffertjes at a small market.

When I first woke up to get ready for the excursion, I wasn’t very excited. The exam week had just passed; I was looking forward to having a care-free weekend before the second period started. However, in the end it was actually such a cute day. Not only did I learn a lot and receive some food for thought for my own HIP group, I also got the chance to bond more with the other students and explore a city I was unfamiliar with.

If you want to hear more about my Honours Programme experience, follow along as I update you throughout the year! Until next time…

– Jasmin