Takween- Creative Experiences & Programme Design

I work with Takween as a creative experience design consultant, developing workshops, masterclasses and longer-form learning programmes that bring together creativity, STEAM, play and technology.

A key part of this collaboration has been Dream, Build, Make: Big Ideas, Little Builders, an early-years programme for children aged 2–4 and their parents or carers. Alongside this, I have developed workshop concepts for the Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale 2026 & 2025, translating themes of rain, movement, migration, memory, and journeys into playful, hands-on experiences using robotics, coding, storytelling, and interactive technology.

Dream, Build, Make: Big Ideas, Little Builders

The programme is built around the idea that young children learn through making, movement, imagination and play. Each 60-minute workshop begins with a shared story or idea, before children are invited to build, create and explore through open-ended making and gentle digital experiences. Across the programme, children experiment with robotics, colour, light, pattern, animation, sound, drawing and construction. Activities are designed to encourage curiosity, choice and playful exploration, with children moving between physical and digital ways of making.

Each workshop follows a simple structure:

Introduce → Make & Build → Play → Share

The environment is deliberately open-ended, allowing children to move, make and play at their own pace, independently or alongside a parent or carer.

Designing the Experience

My role is to think about the whole participant experience, from the story, environment and materials to the technologies, activities and way people move through the space. For Dream, Build, Make, this included developing experiences around pattern and mark-making, bringing children's characters to life through animation, experimenting with light and shadow, creating robot pathways through the environment, and combining digital art, music and collaborative making.

Research, Testing & Training

As part of my consultancy work, I research and test creative tools, technologies and applications to understand how they can work for a particular audience, age group or programme. I prototype activities, make recommendations about the most appropriate tools and approaches, then develop them into practical workshop formats. I also deliver training sessions so facilitators understand both how to use the technology and how to create the right conditions for playful, creative learning around it. For me, technology is never the end point. It is a material for play, storytelling, experimentation and discovery.

The Approach

At the heart of the work is creating environments where children have permission to be curious, to make something, change it, play with it and see what happens next. Rather than directing everyone towards the same outcome, the programme creates multiple ways to participate, encouraging children and adults to make alongside one another, follow ideas and learn through doing.