2021 experience design incubator cohort
Patty Purpur de Vries
Director of Strategy, Outreach and Innovation for Stanford’s BeWell (Employee Wellness) Program. Passionate about nature, getting back to our essence and caring for the land that is in my care.
https://bewell.stanford.edu/stanford-wellness-fireside-chats/
Kate Douglas
Kate Douglas is a writer, composer and performer. Recent work includes THE NINTH HOUR, her operetta with Shayfer James at The Met Cloisters, her immersive play EXTINCT (produced with support from a LMCC Engagement Grant) and her musical AGAINST WOMEN & MUSIC! with Grace McLean.
Ben Gorelick
Before he became an ordained Rabbi, Ben Gorelick was the Director of a 4 year college for Mountain Guides, with branches all over the world. Today, Rabbi Ben is the head of Mifneh L'Kedushah, a Denver based synagogue that facilitates transcendent, connected experiences through spirituality, psychedelics, breath/sound/movement, sacred sexuality, religious ecstasy, and nature-based retreats.
Heather Griffin
Heather Griffin (she/her) operates at the intersection of art, design and futures to bring communities together and create new narratives for our transitional times.
Amber Hopkins
Amber (they/them) is a somatic educator and interdisciplinary artist living in the ancestral homelands of Munsee Lenape, Canarsie and Lisjan Ohlone people. Drawing on movement arts, somatic tools, kink politics, dream studies, writing, design and relational frameworks, Amber works solo as Realm and in collaboration as Autosomatica.
Joan Howard
Joan is a clown, physical theatre creator, and maker dedicated to activating meaningful human connection through play. Joan creates interactive performance events that incite unexpected delight and spontaneous community in public space, featuring physical comedy performed by absurd characters and simple mechanical objects.
2020 Pandemic Games TORCH RELAY (ClownCorps-USA), May 2020 https://youtu.be/MCH73M33-Lc
David Jermyn
David is a Toronto-based live event creator, community builder, and film/TV-maker. He is the co-founder of Planet Fabulon, a super-silly arts collective obsessed with exploring how live events (filled with costumes, immersive storytelling, interactive art, dancing, and live performance) can be used as a medium for promoting greater connection, playfulness, and social change.
Sam Langer
Sam is a meditation teacher, community builder, and storyteller who weaves together narratives and healing practices to help people step into their own hero’s journey.
Live Projects:
Lynette Lee
Lynette designs experiences that encourage play, curiosity, and empathy. Her projects focus on connecting strangers in serendipitous ways.
Link: https://secrets.exchange
Alex Leff
While sharing a fateful plate of nachos, Alex Leff (documentary filmmaker) and friend Jon Pedigo decided to move to Los Angeles to run their interactive absurdist comedy Bar of Dreams. Currently Alex (now also an immersive theater creator) lives on a small farm with chickens and sheep in western Massachusetts, finishing his documentary film, and crafting a new immersive experience called Human Nature Odyssey.
Anne-Marie Litak
Anne-Marie creates place-based experiences for folks to deepen their connection with where they’re at. She facilitates intimate conversations through Shared_Studio’s Portals and has introduced tens of thousands of people to different art experiences, from Ai Weiwei on Alcatraz to her recent work with JR.
Monera Mason
Monera Mason is a creative mischief-maker, who is most happy in artistic fellowship. Her work includes: starting questionable cults with notorious software gurus, writing immersive narrative for umbraphiles, adventuring with artistic hoteliers, and of course, catalyzing shenanigans which she deploys on unsuspecting bystanders in the City of Neon.
Kristin McWharter
Kristin McWharter is an artist who uses performance and play to interrogate the relationship between competition and intimacy. Inspired by 20th century sports narrative, collective decision making, and technology as a contemporary spiritual authority, her work blurs the boundaries of intimacy and hype culture to challenge viewer's relationships to competitive drive.
Jake Ottosen
Jake is an actor and sharer of wondrous experiences. He has built escape rooms, performed Shakespeare, helped start a theater company, studied clown, made silly films, improvised, tried to take up running like 5 times, made music, made a musical, acted at a Renaissance Faire, laughed at his friends, and, most recently, survived the year 2020.
Creatrix Tiara
Creatrix Tiara (pronouns: 'Tiara' or they/them, currently in Melbourne AU) gets up to shenanigans. Most recent shenanigans include the world's first Fringe Festival on Animal Crossing: New Horizons, stage magic & social justice show Queer Lady Magician, a Secret Society themed ARG for The Village Festival, experimental collaborative art for queer disabled artist collective Quippings, and much more.
Sarah Vitak
Sarah is a maker, scientist, radio producer, writer, experience designer, and artist! She is currently freelance writing, producing, and arting in Denver. Her journey has involved work at and collaborations with the MIT Media Lab, Guerilla Science, The Awesome Foundation, Oregon Health and Science University, Make: Magazine, and the US Forest Service.
Natalie Whelan
Natalie Whelan is a global insights director, creative strategist, designer of immersive experiences, and clown. Past projects include a sensorial innovation funhouse in Mexico City, an OKCupid profile for a giraffe, and the submerging of a sad person in a kiddie pool filled with stuffed animals mailed from friends around the world.
Kim Willis
Kim is an award-winning strategist, founder and journalist in London, UK. She runs the Heroine’s Journey storytelling project, is writing her first book, and on the eve of her 40th birthday is excited to design a new experience to bridge divided worlds.
Eli Zemper
Having recently concluded her decade-long tenure as the Director of the International Poetry Guild at the University of Michigan, Eli is turning her creative energies to writing and producing immersive stories for a new venture: Curiouser, a tiny travel agency. In other areas of her life, Eli finds herself occupied with teaching teens, parenting small and medium-sized children, directing the operations of an on-campus hoophouse, and training for endurance races.