The Foreigner's Journey

The Foreigner's Journey is a playful immersive experience I co-designed and co-facilitated with Adelė Šalkauskaitė. It explores what it means to live as an expat in Denmark. It aims to reframe how foreigners see themselves, moving away from non-belonging and towards uncovering our unique gifts as "beings in between worlds". We take foreigners through a carefully curated journey through the rooms of Villa Kultur, Østerbro's cultural mansion, while we uncover the phases all expats go through once they take the brave step to start anew in a foreign country.

Producing the signature Kaospilot Experience Design training in Copenhagen

It was an honour to help produce the Kaospilot Experience Design training in Copenhagen.

After having the best experience with this training 2 years ago myself, I had the chance to be a backstage contributor and see what needs to happen behind the scenes in order to deliver a transformative learning experience. Apart from ensuring that all details were in place, I was tasked with creating a 10 meter-long hand-drawn roadmap of the 3 days we spent together, capturing shared moments, funny sayings, and the specificities of the group as the training was unfolding.

The Energy Experience for Abtion

I designed and facilitated this team experience around the theme "energy". Here are some of the highlights: 
⛽️ The Energy Meters - making everyone's energy levels visible to others in the room. 
🪄 The Goblet of Struggle - a magical chalice that transforms struggles into growth, Hogwarts-style of course!
🍌 The Banana Profiles - The energy givers and takers for each teammate, written on bananas.
🎙 Story Time - Reflections on how Abtion could become a more nourishing and inspiring place!

Consulting for the event "Co-creation through Jazz" at ETH Student Project House

I had the pleasure to contribute to this amazing event combining jazz and co-creation for the students at ETH Student Project House in Switzerland.  We had a fruitful consulting session together about the design of their event. The main question was: How to lead participants to a feeling of oneness while trusting that the co-creation process will take them places they could not have imagined alone? 

Elevating the Thesis Festival event at Station

It was such an enriching experience for me to help the event team with the design of their annual Specialefestivalen (Thesis Festival). Starting with the big vision and aligning every detail to that vision is key to making an event imapctful.  I cannot wait to see the quantum Leap that the team will be taking for their upcoming events at Station.

Teaching Event Design to SensiMate

SensiMate is a Copenhagen-based startup carrying out early market testing for food & beverage products within the right consumption context. I had the privilege of teaching the experience design fundamentals to their driven team, helping them bring their event designs to the next level. Together, we explored:  the desired impact of their events, their events' north star, designing for each of the five distinct phases of an experience and, finally,  strategically designing the building blocks of their event.

Julefrokost Connection package for Abtion

Abtion is a digital agency focused on collective ownership and efficiency. I created a Connection package for their Julefrokost that consisted of a well-thought conversation menu to accompany their dinner. The menu encouraged teammates to go beyond the basic themes that they would usually discuss on a regular day at the office and reach deeper topics, share from their personal experience and listen to one another. The experience was wrapped up by colleagues reciving anonymous compliments from one another.

The Playground at CCCCCCC

The Playground is a 2h workshop I designed and facilitated for the team at CCCCCCC, an animation company in Frederiksberg. It is a playful, engaging way to discover every teammate's play personality and reflect on how to use it to do your best work.

I invited the team to build a fort in their office, where we shared stories of play from both our personal and professional lives. The main learning point: whenever the work we do resembles our favourite ways to play, we are engaged and energised and we shine.  So, how can we use play to fuel our work? 

Team building for Sweet Burlesque

A card game designed with the intention of encouraging better converations among colleagues. It was used by Sweet Burlesque dance trainers for their Julefrokost in 2022. The purpose was to bring the dance trainers closer together, to learn about each other, and for them to connect with the company culture. The game was a mix of deep questions and funny tasks that kept the engagement and energy high. 

Future Bakery by Tenco

Future Bakery by Tenco is a series of events focusing on prototyping (a.k.a. “baking”) solutions to relevant challenges of today’s workplace through applying design thinking tools. Future Bakery relies on people-powered transformation, collective intelligence and design methods. Bakers get together to find the right ingredients and to try out new recipes. I participated in their pilot event on the topic of “Hybrid collaboration”, where I assisted with designing the experience and with facilitating the day.

Harmonica Wedding

Too few of us stop and ask ourselves if current scripts for weddings still make sense to the version of ourselves we are today or if they are still relevant to the unique moment in time and corner of the universe we find ourselves in. I freed myself from this baggage and used experience design to create the wedding me and my partner wanted. I aimed at fusing our guests into a community that would support us and one another later in life. I planned a honest, down-to-earth secular ceremony which ended in a big group hug. We sang songs all together, went through a dance journey, and finished with a goodbye ritual with candles and postcards. 

The Future of Work

A living room conversation about the world of work - creating an environment for guests to openly share their frustrations and disappointments around the workplace and for all of us to re-imagine what an ideal workplace could look like. We touched upon personal work preferrences,  hybrid culture, psychological safety, management styles, and dreamt about a better future of work.

Emotional Intelligence Meetups

I organised and facilitated 30+ meetups in Copenhagen, inspired by The School of Life’s topics of self-knowledge and emotional intelligence. Ranging from group discussions, to 1-on-1 conversations, to campfire evenings, these meetups are an oasis for deeper conversations and connection among participants. We discuss work, family, relationships, love, and what it means to be human.

Campfire Evenings

One of the most ancient ways in which communities met is by sharing stories around the campfire. Perhaps understanding one another comes more easily while we sit together gazing into the flames. I led 3 campfire evenings where I facilitated heartfelt conversation and group singing, which felt magical and connective.

Rite of Passage for 30th birthday

A rite of passage is a ceremony or event marking an important stage in someone's life. I got the opportunity to create one for my partner’s 30th birthday. I gathered all his friends in a ceremony to honour the passing of time and the friendships made along the way. A dive in the fresh lake water marked the transition to his new decade of life, with water being a no-return doorway to his 30s. The ceremony involved singing, burning sage for good energy, a box filled with memories from his 20s decade, and many flowers.

Emotional Spring Cleaning

In this event, I guided participants into group conversations about the cleaning that we are ready to do internally - of old patterns, past hurts, and anxieties. Guided by well-thought questions, participants identified their own emotional baggage and wrote it down on pieces of paper. At the end, we gathered in circle and burned what didn’t serve us whilst cheering for each other. It was a cathartic experience.

The Daily Contributor Workshop

I used playfulness find a way to present qualitative data from contributor interviews to the team at Iconfinder. Instead of making presentation slides, I created a physical newspaper issue with fun articles and illustrations and had the team read each article out loud and use highlighters to mark information worth remembering. Adding a fun touch, involving the team and closing laptops resulted in an enjoyable workshop and a great learning experience for everyone.

Community Dinner

Memorable dinners are those with a great conversation going on around the table. They are those few occasions where we get to discuss deeper topics, get to reveal parts of ourselves and make real connections with others. I hosted my first dinner of this kind in November 2021, in Copenhagen. The event was sold out as 30 people came to experience human-to-human connection and left with a smile and new-found friendships.

Johari Window Model Workshop

I facilitated a workshop on the Johari Window Model for the team at Iconfinder, with the goal of understanding perceptions and developing trust within the team. After introducing the model, we reflected on how our team building efforts helped enlarge the open area and uncovered a few personal blind spots through a team exercise.

Vikingeting

I was part of the organising team for this theme party that welcomed 33 guests into a world inspired by Viking history and mythology. We guided participants through games and experiences to become more present to themselves and one another. The day included a welcome ritual for guests, dedicated to honouring Odin, Freja and Thor, treasure hunts across the lake, community singing, and stories around the bonfire. I guided a 1-hour-long dance journey to help bring guests more into their bodies.

The Flow State Meetup

I organised this online gathering around Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s concept of flow. After introducing what flow means, what it feels like and how to achieve it, I facilitated a group conversation in which participants shared their own experiences of when they reached a state of flow.

Play Personalities Workshop

I facilitated this fun workshop for the team at Iconfinder where we discovered each teammate's play personality. I was inspired by the wonderful book "Play" by Stuart Brown.  It was interesting to think about the ways in which we play as adults and how our play personality fits into our work and private lives respectively. The main question this workshop ended with was "How can each of us use our unique play personality to do better work and live a more fulfilled life?”.

Pleasure Points of Work

Based on the book “A job to love” by The School of Life, I ran a workshop for the team at Iconfinder that focused on identifying the enjoyable aspects present in each employee’s daily work. I guided a reflection exercise and facilitated a group sharing session which resulted in better self-knowledge for the employees and higher empathy and understanding within the team.

DISC Personality Workshop Series

I encouraged the team at Iconfinder to find out more about their DISC personalities using a tool called Crystal. In this series of workshops, we learnt about each one’s personalities - what was energising, what was draining, what came naturally to each person. After long, fascinating discussion sessions, we arrived at an eye-opening overview of the whole team’s strengths and weaknesses.

Wellness Retreat

I was part of the organising team for this wellness-themed party. Our 35 guests came in bathrobes and we spent the day wearing facemasks, doing yoga, meditation, dance, massage and mindful eating. I co-led an "Ugliness Therapy" workshop, which culminated into a "Silly Walks Parade". It was such a hillarious way to let go of the need to look good and to start expressing yourself more freely.