Studio Connecting Cultures celebrates diversity. Therefore they find it important that all newcomers can merge into society and feel at home. Accordingly, their mission is to create a sustainable connection between natives and newcomers. Together we build an environment that triggers people to expand their horizon, exchange perspectives and learn from each other.

Studio Connecting Cultures provides a set of workshops that guides people from different cultures to build up a strong friendship. In these workshops, the studio makes use of the Connecting Cultures Toolkit. This toolkit contains small games and exercises in four steps that support the participants to build up a mutual understanding and celebrate diversity. Studio Connecting Cultures started in August and is trying out several formats and contexts, in order to explore where they could add the most value.

The short movie '6 OBJECTS – Projecting Identity Expressions' (2017) explores the emotional attachment between body and objects – such as clothing or accessory. For this movie the term 'artistic documentary' is invented. 'Documentary' because 6 people from various backgrounds are interviewed and 'artistic' because artistic choices are made in order to guide the focus of the audience attention.

Jella and her team invented the term 'artistic documentary' to describe the genre of the short movie. Jella would like to discuss with the audience how to communicate and connect such a new term to a broader audience.

Solemaker.io is a new way of designing, producing, using and re-using shoes. We are building an ultra-personalised product service system enabling artists, designers, researchers, engineers and wearers to co-create their shoes, initiating the shift towards a co-created economy.

With a Design United grant we developed a demonstrator of our design vision presented the Dutch Design Week & Dubai Design Week 2016 using a custom-built e-textile foot scanner, 3d printing and generative parametric design algorithms.

To further develop the technology and launch Solemaker as a business we’ve received funding from WEAR Sustain. We are currently setting up a deployment ready web-platform, further developing our shoe models and design stories with designers Vera de Pont and Eva Klabalova and setting up collaborations with partners in developing wearable in-shoe sensor technologies. Our aim is to go to market with a low-volume initial beta-launch in Q1 2018.

Doctors spend 50% of their day time in administrative tasks, giving them the feeling of burn out and taking them away from patient care. With ‘Sight’, Miguel and his team from Medinreal, aim to take doctors away from computers, helping them focus on what matters most: patients. They aim to bring back the human connection to medicine.

Smart glasses are proven to increase efficiency in the medical field, reducing liability and increasing privacy of the doctor-patient relationship. Existing solutions show features of engineering with the aim to make them look impressive but lack to express user's personality, when it comes down to usability and practicality we often struggle to find many benefits.

‘Sight’ is a pair of glasses that fit the users face and work with their eyes, they fit their personality and professional life, preventing unnecessary distraction and allowing them to focus on what is important. Medinreal aims to make technology to work for the user. Miguel is looking for advice on how to design a wearable that helps the wearer to connect with the world, instead of isolating him or her.

PLYGRND.city is a social design innovation brand. They gamify the public space to stimulate physical movement and social interaction among people. PLYGRND.city does this in 2 ways. Social design projects in challenging neighborhoods, and tech projects to utilize our future world possibilities. For the latter they have recently designed, developed and launched a first application for the Citybeacons in the city center of Eindhoven. Urban bootcamp in the city, to use objects in the public space in a creative way for your exercises. The PLYGRND.city urban bootcamp is a 45-minute full body workout with 18 different exercises that you can do by yourself, together & in a group.

Amorphous Revolution is a conscious shoe line, made from the biological substance melanin. Melanin is an amino acid found in all organic life, which stimulates and accelerates the production of mycelium. Mycelium, the dense root structure of mushroom, could be used to create a type of leather. This leather, Stephannie used to create the Amorphous Revolution Shoe. During the first launch, she ran into problems trying to make the shoe. The mycelium was not strong enough material for the prototype.

She is now looking for a substitute. She found the company Lifematerials.eu which makes MuSkin; a 100 % vegetable eco-alternative to animal leather. It comes from the Phellinus ellipsoideus, a kind of big parasitic fungus. The total absence of toxic substance makes Muskin ideal for the use in close-to-skin applications. Stephannie is looking for tips to relaunch her shoe.