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Morning: Shared Adventures

08:15 –
09:00
Registration

Kick-start your journey of wonder!

Light bites, Coffee and Tea will be served. 

09:00 –
09:30
Curious Conversations

 

Join our Guest of Honour in a fireside chat with students as they share their experiences on design mindsets.

09:30 –
12:00
COLLECTIVE EXPERIENCES

Led by bold thinkers such as Nikki Martyn, Natalie Alexandra Tse, and Cesar Harada, this
high-energy, hands-on session will jumpstart your creativity.

12:00 –
13:00
Lunch

Fuel up before continuing on your journey.

Afternoon: Personal Journey

In the afternoon, The Wonder Lab opens into a playground of possibilities, where participants get to choose between inspiring talks, hands-on practical experiments, or enlightening conversations. 

Participants may choose an activity from either of the four columns. We recommend choosing a mix of different formats as each offers its own unique way to spark ideas and imagination.

● Curated Insights
(Talks)

Step into the auditorium and hear from bold voices reimagining the future. These sessions spark fresh perspectives and invite you to see learning in new ways.

●Creative Labs
(Workshops)

Roll up your sleeves and dive in. In these playful, hands-on sessions, you’ll experiment, create, and bring design mindsets to life.

●Communities of Interest
(Focused Tracks)

Spend time with educators and academics delving into specific topics of interest. These focused sessions allow for deeper reflection into design and education practices, offering fresh tools, structured concepts, and practical ideas to carry forward.

13:00 –
14:00
Curated Insights
A1
Nikki Martyn

Founder, Chief Visionary Officer, The Love Lab: Child Futures Innovation PlaySpace

Love Over Algorithms: A Neurorelational Framework for the Future of Humanity

What kind of humanity are we raising in the age of AI?

In this visionary talk, Nikki Martyn introduces Love-Informed Education, building on trauma-informed practice through the Neurorelational Love Model and the Love Loop. Drawing from neuroscience, attachment theory, and child development, she reframes children’s behaviour as predictions of the nervous system—not problems to be solved.

Participants will explore how design mindsets like empathy, curiosity, and courage shape classrooms grounded in attuned relationships rather than algorithms. At a turning point in human evolution, this session challenges us to reimagine education as a space of healing, belonging, and love-led design—because children are what they experience, and the future is what we design them to feel.

A1
Lisa Scharoun

Head of School, School of Design Queensland University of Technology

Down the Rabbit Hole: Fostering life-long learning methods to ignite Creativity

As children, curiosity is instinctive—our natural drive to explore, experiment, and understand the world. Yet as we grow, playful curiosity often yields to the constraints of social norms and expectations. What would it mean to reclaim this spirit of open-ended wonder?

Drawing inspiration from Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, this session takes participants on a journey “down the rabbit hole,” encountering the strange, uncomfortable, and inspiring as catalysts for new thinking. Through individual and collective exercises, participants will rediscover curiosity as a powerful tool for design, fostering collaboration, creative confidence, and innovation through rapid design sprints.

The session emphasises how curiosity fuels the design process, how it shapes creative mindsets, and why it is essential for building more playful, resilient, and imaginative societies.

Creative Labs
Cesar Harada

Founder, MakerBay

Designing Education for Nature, Others, and Self

Building on the talk From Scarcity to Abundance, this hands-on workshop invites educators to move from reflection to action.

Through guided dialogue, creative exercises, and small-group prototyping, participants will explore how education can nurture learners who harmonize with nature, others, and self. The workshop encourages experimentation, collaboration, and personal reflection—an embodied inquiry into what an abundant and regenerative education might look like.


Participants will:
•Reframe design education around ecological, social, and personal flourishing.
•Reflect on their own transitions as educators—what beliefs or fears are ready to evolve?
•Imagine and prototype future learning systems rooted in curiosity, empathy, and abundance.


Together, we will co-create speculative “schools of the future”—learning environments where children’s authentic interests lead the way, where progress is measured in meaningful, human ways, and where education becomes a force of love, imagination, and collective courage.

Clement Zheng & Alexandra Primary School

Assistant Professor, National University of Singapore

Owning the Magic: Empowering Students in Physical-Digital Making with Generative and Reflective AI

What if students could design their own magical superpower—and then bring it to life?

In this workshop, educators will explore a case study from Alexandra Primary School, where students and parents imagined, animated, and built their own powers. Beginning with sketches and storytelling, students used a custom generative AI tool to animate magical effects, then crafted physical props to merge the digital with the tangible.

Participants will try the AI tool themselves, hear first-hand reflections from parents and students, and discover how such tools can be woven into holistic workshops that bridge physical and digital making. Along the way, they will see how STEM learning can be transformed through creativity, agency, and playful collaboration—empowering students to truly own the magic.

Kenneth Chia

Senior Project Manager, Digital Dream

MOVING FORWARD: An Anti-Design Workshop

What happens when we design not for perfection, but for progress?

In this immersive, hands-on session, 20–24 participants will be introduced to Digital Dream and their mixed reality system, before diving into the collaborative design of simple, “endless” games. Working in teams, participants will use an editor and template to create unique games inspired by the design dispositions of Courage and Tenacity—then swap projects and attempt to clear each other’s challenges.

Structured into four fast-paced sections—Introduction, Design, Showcase, and Reflection—the workshop demonstrates the principles of anti-design: embracing imperfection, learning through mistakes, and seeing failure as fuel for growth. Participants will leave with strategies to reframe setbacks as opportunities, and the confidence to move forward with courage and resilience.

14:00 –
14:10
Embark on your next adventure
 
 
14:10 –
15:10
Curated Insights
B1
Vincent Siu 

Founder and Lead Producer, Press Start Studios

Creativity is Both an Art and a Science

Did you know you’re creative? Yes, you.

In this talk, game designer and educator Vince Siu challenges the myth that creativity is a gift, showing instead how it is a muscle that can be developed with the right routines, frameworks, and systems. Drawing from universal principles of storytelling and creativity, Vince shares how structure and practice make new ideas accessible to anyone—not just “creative types.”

Participants will discover how creativity operates at the intersection of art and science, and leave with strategies to nurture their own creative potential in everyday life.

B1
Jessica Grauds

Accessibility, Apple Initiatives

Jordyn Zimmerman

Manager, Education Products and Program Development, Center for Enriched Living

Reaching all Learners

Every student has the right to a quality education – an education that’s creative, collaborative, engaging, and relevant. And technology can enable all students, with every type of learning style, to explore new possibilities. For students who learn differently, the use of carefully chosen supports is vital to allow learning to take place. When technology and thoughtful instructional design meet these personal learning needs, the results are magical – as it empowers everyone.

Join Jessica Grauds and Jordyn Zimmerman as they speak about what inclusive design for education look like. Jordyn will share her journey as a nonspeaking autistic person, who is now a passionate advocate and educator. Her message about accessing the power of technology will encourage you to think deeply about how you can make change.

Creative Labs
Tzang Merwyn Tong

Educator, Filmmaker and Senior Lecturer, Republic Polytechnic

First Shot(s) X-Change — Designing for Uncertainty

As design, media, and technology converge, how do we prepare students to thrive in ambiguity?

In this talk, filmmaker and educator Tzang Merwyn Tong introduces First Shot(s) X-Change, an experimental learning platform uniting students from four countries across game design, user experience, media production, animation, and A.I. to co-create bold media experiments.

Beyond technical skills, the program cultivates dispositions such as curiosity, courage, resilience, optimism, and empathy—qualities essential for navigating uncertainty and building future readiness. Through stories from the field, Tzang reveals how letting students wrestle with wonder, messiness, and the unknown transforms challenges into catalysts for growth.

This is a call to educators: to let go of neat outcomes and design learning experiences that are brave, adaptive, and full of wonder.

Natalie Alexandra Tse

Co-founder, Director of Young Audience & Community Engagement, Education and Research, SAtheCollective Ltd. (Singapore)

SonicPlay™: Cultivating Curiosity, Empathy, and Courage through Soundscape Education in Early Childhood

How can sound spark curiosity, empathy, and courage in young learners?

SonicPlay™ is an emergent pedagogy rooted in constructivist and Reggio Emilia philosophies, drawing on soundscape education (Schafer, Westerkamp) and deep listening (Oliveros). Based on three years of research in a Singaporean preschool, it reimagines sound education beyond Western paradigms to foster aesthetic awareness, intercultural sensitivity, and environmental stewardship.

Through the Five Elements—Metal, Wood, Water, Fire, Earth—participants will experience the SonicPlay™ approach:

  • Exploration: sensory encounters with natural and upcycled materials
  • Contextualisation: storytelling that builds personal and cultural connections
  • Creation: composing soundscapes through inquiry and improvisation

Educators will leave with inclusive, sound-centred tools to inspire wonder, resilience, and creative expression in early childhood settings.

Gracia Goh

Designer & Urban Researcher

The City as a Classroom

This hands-on workshop reimagines the city as a living classroom for curiosity and civic engagement. Instead of starting with textbooks, participants will use everyday urban questions—like “Why do BTOs look the same?” or “Who decides where bike lanes end?”—as sparks for student-led inquiry. Designed for educators across disciplines, the session introduces a project-based framework that links curriculum to real-world systems, policies, and spaces. Through a mini “civic puzzle sprint,” participants will practice strategies for scaffolding inquiry, explore how identity and context shape urban experiences, and gain tools to help students see themselves as both designers of, and designed by, the city.

15:10 –
15:40
TEA BREAK
 
 
15:40 –
16:40
Curated Insights
C1
Lynette Tan

Chief Executive Officer, Space Faculty

Dream – Design – Do

What does it take to turn a childhood dream into reality?

In this inspiring talk, Lynette Tan shares how her fascination with the cosmos grew into a lifelong quest that culminated in her own voyage to space. Her story is more than a mission log—it is a reflection on the power of curiosity, the courage to face the unknown, and the tenacity to overcome setbacks.

Lynette shows why these qualities are not just admirable, but essential tools for achieving the seemingly impossible. While her story reaches to the stars, she hopes it will inspire others to pursue their own bold dreams, whatever form they may take.

C1
Cesar Harada

Founder, MakerBay

Who Are Singapore’s Next Pioneers?

Our relationship with nature, others, and ourselves has grown adversarial. We have built systems that exploit the living world, fuel conflict, and constrain children with limiting beliefs that perpetuate destructive cycles. At the same time, technological and climate shifts outpace our ability to adapt. What kind of education truly serves our children in this context?

Inventor and educator Cesar Harada proposes a bold alternative: transitioning from scarcity to abundance, fear to love, and competition to collaboration. Through an integrated talk and workshop, participants will explore how design education can nurture pioneers who harmonize with nature, others, and self.

The session invites educators to:

  • Reframe design education for nature, others, and self
  • Reflect on their own transitions as educators 
  • Imagine how education systems can evolve toward resilience, curiosity, and abundance

Together, we will co-create visions of education that align with children’s authentic interests and measure progress in more meaningful, human ways—illuminating a future driven by love, imagination, and collective courage.

Creative Labs
Nikki Martyn

Founder, Chief Visionary Officer, The Love Lab: Child Futures Innovation PlaySpace

The Consentaverse Experience: Playful Tools for Digital Wisdom & Emotional Safety

Children today are not just using technology—they are growing up inside it.

This experiential workshop introduces The Consentaverse, a playful, love-informed approach to cultivating digital discernment, identity, and emotional safety. Rooted in the belief that children are shaped by their experiences, participants will explore how technology influences nervous system development, relational capacity, and literacy.

Through reflective practices anchored in the DesignSingapore Dispositions, educators will activate empathy, curiosity, courage, and optimism to design digital environments where children flourish. Walk away with strategies for reimagining digital education as a space of healing, agency, and human becoming.

Vincent Siu

Founder and Lead Producer, Press Start Studios

Play, Write, Grow: Reflecting on Our Creative Prowess and Process through Fiero!

What happens when creativity meets play?

In this interactive workshop, participants will dive into Fiero!, a three-act storytelling card game designed by Vincent Siu. Together, they’ll co-create wild ideas, legendary characters, and unforgettable stories across 20 different genres.

The session goes beyond gameplay: Vince will guide a reflection on how narrative design and collaborative play unlock new ways of seeing creativity—as diverse, personal, and deeply social. Educators, writers, designers, and even those who “don’t think they’re creative” will leave inspired, with practical insights into building environments that spark imagination and collective storytelling.

Ng Fong Yee

Child Culture Designer

Curious Creatures: Facilitating Collaboration through Speculative Design

How can play spark collective imagination?

In this hands-on workshop, participants will transform everyday objects into “curious creatures” and design their speculative habitats. Through playful making, they will experience how collaboration unfolds differently between children and adults, and how participation can surface in diverse, unexpected ways.

The session demonstrates how play-led facilitation encourages curiosity, imagination, and empathy—inviting participants to think and feel through making. No art or design background is required; only an openness to explore, invent, and co-create.

13:00 –
14:30
COMMUNITIES OF INTEREST

International Workshop on Design Education, Research and Practice

Nadya Patel

Assistant Professor, Singapore Institute of Technology

Karin Aue

Senior Lecturer, Program Lead Master of Design in Integrated Design, National University of Singapore

In an era of rapid change, design education must move beyond established norms to remain relevant, impactful, and inclusive. This workshop brings together educators, practitioners, and students to reimagine how we teach and learn design—laying the groundwork for an edited book that captures diverse visions for the future of the field.

Through collaborative activities, including the Sparked card game, participants will critically question and reframe current paradigms, explore futures-oriented and cross-disciplinary pedagogies, and experiment with playful tools for dialogue. Together, they will identify strategies for embedding courage and curiosity into design learning, while co-creating visions for education that embrace uncertainty, diversity, and resilience.

Grounded in the DesignSingapore Council’s Design Dispositions, this session blends intellectual sparring with playful provocation—inviting participants to imagine new roles for design in shaping equitable, sustainable, and creative futures.

14:45 –
16:40
Creative Labs
B5
Marta Miguel

Senior Academic Mentor, Temasek Polytechnic

Rachna Johri

Deputy Director , Temasek Polytechnic’s Learning Academy

Guardians of Gaia: Imagining Resilient Futures Through Collaborative Play

How can play help us grapple with the complexity of sustainability?

Guardians of Gaia is an immersive board game that brings systems thinking to life through collaborative play. In this workshop, participants take on “wicked problems” — deeply entangled social and ecological challenges — and discover how everyday choices ripple across global systems.

Through gameplay, participants will experience systems thinking not just as a concept, but as a way of seeing and responding to complexity. They will explore how curiosity sparks critical inquiry, how empathy enables inclusive and regenerative design responses, and how playful approaches can inspire resilience and collective healing.

Aligned with the summit’s dispositions of curiosity and empathy, this session demonstrates how game-based learning can foster transdisciplinary perspectives, shift mindsets, and empower learners to navigate uncertainty with care and creativity.

13:00 –
16:40
COMMUNITIES OF INTEREST

Collective Conversations: Nurturing Design Mindsets in Schools

13:00 – 15:10

Collective Conversations

Step into a community space where educators, partners, and curious minds engage in a lively exchange, sharing stories and sparking ideas around Design Mindsets through Learning by Design projects.

These five 30-minute sessions will be filled with honest stories, clever hacks, and eureka moments. Jump in and be a part of the conversation!

For deeper one-on-one exchanges, be sure to swing by the Human Library booths to trade stories and insights with educators.

15:10 – 15:40

Human Libraries

Stop by the booths for deeper one-on-one exchanges with our educators.

15:40 – 16:40

Collective Conversations Continues

16:40 –
16:50
Embark on your next adventure
16:50 –
17:30
Collective Reflections

Spend a moment to look back on all the wonders you’ve experienced, and how you can bring them to life in your own classrooms.

17:30 –
17:45
Closing Session

Join Dawn Lim, Executive Director of the DesignSingapore Council, as she lights the way forward to the next chapter in design and education.

*Programme subject to changes.

08:15 – 09:00
Registration

Kick-start your journey of wonder!

09:00 – 09:30
Curious Conversations

 

Join our Guest of Honour in a fireside chat with students as they share their experiences on design mindsets.

09:30 – 12:00
COLLECTIVE EXPERIENCES

Led by bold thinkers such as Nikki Martyn, Natalie Alexandra Tse, and Cesar Harada, this
high-energy, hands-on session will jumpstart your creativity.

12:00 – 13:00
Lunch

Fuel up before continuing on your journey.

Afternoon Programme

In the afternoon, The Wonder Lab opens into a playground of possibilities, where plenaries, workshops, and conversations unfold. Each session offers its own way to spark ideas and imagination. You’ll only be able to journey down one path in each time block, so choose the session that excites you most, whether it’s listening, making or exploring together.

● Curated Insights
(Talks)

Step into the auditorium and hear from bold voices reimagining the future. These sessions spark fresh perspectives and invite you to see learning in new ways.

● Creative Labs (Workshops)

Roll up your sleeves and dive in. In these playful, hands-on sessions, you’ll experiment, create, and bring design mindsets to life.

● Communities of Interest (Focused Tracks)

Spend time with educators and academics delving into specific topics of interest. These focused sessions allow for deeper reflection into design and education practices, offering fresh tools, structured concepts, and practical ideas to carry forward.

13:00 – 14:00
Curated Insights
A1
Nikki Martyn

Founder, Chief Visionary Officer, The Love Lab: Child Futures Innovation PlaySpace

Love Over Algorithms: A Neurorelational Framework for the Future of Humanity

What kind of humanity are we raising in the age of AI?

In this visionary talk, Nikki Martyn introduces Love-Informed Education, building on trauma-informed practice through the Neurorelational Love Model and the Love Loop. Drawing from neuroscience, attachment theory, and child development, she reframes children’s behaviour as predictions of the nervous system—not problems to be solved.

Participants will explore how design mindsets like empathy, curiosity, and courage shape classrooms grounded in attuned relationships rather than algorithms. At a turning point in human evolution, this session challenges us to reimagine education as a space of healing, belonging, and love-led design—because children are what they experience, and the future is what we design them to feel.

A1
Lisa Scharoun

Head of School, School of Design Queensland University of Technology

Down the Rabbit Hole: Fostering life-long learning methods to ignite Creativity

As children, curiosity is instinctive—our natural drive to explore, experiment, and understand the world. Yet as we grow, playful curiosity often yields to the constraints of social norms and expectations. What would it mean to reclaim this spirit of open-ended wonder?

Drawing inspiration from Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, this session takes participants on a journey “down the rabbit hole,” encountering the strange, uncomfortable, and inspiring as catalysts for new thinking. Through individual and collective exercises, participants will rediscover curiosity as a powerful tool for design, fostering collaboration, creative confidence, and innovation through rapid design sprints.

The session emphasises how curiosity fuels the design process, how it shapes creative mindsets, and why it is essential for building more playful, resilient, and imaginative societies.

Creative Labs
Cesar Harada

Founder, MakerBay

Designing Education for Nature, Others, and Self

Building on the talk From Scarcity to Abundance, this hands-on workshop invites educators to move from reflection to action.

Through guided dialogue, creative exercises, and small-group prototyping, participants will explore how education can nurture learners who harmonize with nature, others, and self. The workshop encourages experimentation, collaboration, and personal reflection—an embodied inquiry into what an abundant and regenerative education might look like.


Participants will:
•Reframe design education around ecological, social, and personal flourishing.
•Reflect on their own transitions as educators—what beliefs or fears are ready to evolve?
•Imagine and prototype future learning systems rooted in curiosity, empathy, and abundance.


Together, we will co-create speculative “schools of the future”—learning environments where children’s authentic interests lead the way, where progress is measured in meaningful, human ways, and where education becomes a force of love, imagination, and collective courage.

Clement Zheng & Alexandra Primary School

Assistant Professor, National University of Singapore

Owning the Magic: Empowering Students in Physical-Digital Making with Generative and Reflective AI

What if students could design their own magical superpower—and then bring it to life?

In this workshop, educators will explore a case study from Alexandra Primary School, where students and parents imagined, animated, and built their own powers. Beginning with sketches and storytelling, students used a custom generative AI tool to animate magical effects, then crafted physical props to merge the digital with the tangible.

Participants will try the AI tool themselves, hear first-hand reflections from parents and students, and discover how such tools can be woven into holistic workshops that bridge physical and digital making. Along the way, they will see how STEM learning can be transformed through creativity, agency, and playful collaboration—empowering students to truly own the magic.

Kenneth Chia

Senior Project Manager, Digital Dream

MOVING FORWARD: An Anti-Design Workshop

What happens when we design not for perfection, but for progress?

In this immersive, hands-on session, 20–24 participants will be introduced to Digital Dream and their mixed reality system, before diving into the collaborative design of simple, “endless” games. Working in teams, participants will use an editor and template to create unique games inspired by the design dispositions of Courage and Tenacity—then swap projects and attempt to clear each other’s challenges.

Structured into four fast-paced sections—Introduction, Design, Showcase, and Reflection—the workshop demonstrates the principles of anti-design: embracing imperfection, learning through mistakes, and seeing failure as fuel for growth. Participants will leave with strategies to reframe setbacks as opportunities, and the confidence to move forward with courage and resilience.

14:00 – 14:10
Embark on your next adventure
14:10 – 15:10
Curated Insights
B1
Vincent Siu 

Founder and Lead Producer, Press Start Studios

Creativity is Both an Art and a Science

Did you know you’re creative? Yes, you.

In this talk, game designer and educator Vince Siu challenges the myth that creativity is a gift, showing instead how it is a muscle that can be developed with the right routines, frameworks, and systems. Drawing from universal principles of storytelling and creativity, Vince shares how structure and practice make new ideas accessible to anyone—not just “creative types.”

Participants will discover how creativity operates at the intersection of art and science, and leave with strategies to nurture their own creative potential in everyday life.

B1
Jessica Grauds

Accessibility, Apple Initiatives

Jordyn Zimmerman

Manager, Education Products and Program Development, Center for Enriched Living

Reaching all Learners

Every student has the right to a quality education – an education that’s creative, collaborative, engaging, and relevant. And technology can enable all students, with every type of learning style, to explore new possibilities. For students who learn differently, the use of carefully chosen supports is vital to allow learning to take place. When technology and thoughtful instructional design meet these personal learning needs, the results are magical – as it empowers everyone.

Join Jessica Grauds and Jordyn Zimmerman as they speak about what inclusive design for education look like. Jordyn will share her journey as a nonspeaking autistic person, who is now a passionate advocate and educator. Her message about accessing the power of technology will encourage you to think deeply about how you can make change.

Creative Labs
Tzang Merwyn Tong

Senior Lecturer , School of Technology for Arts, Media and Design, Republic Polytechnic

First Shot(s) X-Change — Designing for Uncertainty

As design, media, and technology converge, how do we prepare students to thrive in ambiguity?

In this talk, filmmaker and educator Tzang Merwyn Tong introduces First Shot(s) X-Change, an experimental learning platform uniting students from four countries across game design, user experience, media production, animation, and A.I. to co-create bold media experiments.

Beyond technical skills, the program cultivates dispositions such as curiosity, courage, resilience, optimism, and empathy—qualities essential for navigating uncertainty and building future readiness. Through stories from the field, Tzang reveals how letting students wrestle with wonder, messiness, and the unknown transforms challenges into catalysts for growth.

This is a call to educators: to let go of neat outcomes and design learning experiences that are brave, adaptive, and full of wonder.

Natalie Alexandra Tse

Co-founder, Director of Young Audience & Community Engagement, Education and Research, SAtheCollective Ltd. (Singapore)

SonicPlay™: Cultivating Curiosity, Empathy, and Courage through Soundscape Education in Early Childhood

How can sound spark curiosity, empathy, and courage in young learners?

SonicPlay™ is an emergent pedagogy rooted in constructivist and Reggio Emilia philosophies, drawing on soundscape education (Schafer, Westerkamp) and deep listening (Oliveros). Based on three years of research in a Singaporean preschool, it reimagines sound education beyond Western paradigms to foster aesthetic awareness, intercultural sensitivity, and environmental stewardship.

Through the Five Elements—Metal, Wood, Water, Fire, Earth—participants will experience the SonicPlay™ approach:

  • Exploration: sensory encounters with natural and upcycled materials
  • Contextualisation: storytelling that builds personal and cultural connections
  • Creation: composing soundscapes through inquiry and improvisation

Educators will leave with inclusive, sound-centred tools to inspire wonder, resilience, and creative expression in early childhood settings.

Gracia Goh

Designer & Urban Researcher

The City as a Classroom

This hands-on workshop reimagines the city as a living classroom for curiosity and civic engagement. Instead of starting with textbooks, participants will use everyday urban questions—like “Why do BTOs look the same?” or “Who decides where bike lanes end?”—as sparks for student-led inquiry. Designed for educators across disciplines, the session introduces a project-based framework that links curriculum to real-world systems, policies, and spaces. Through a mini “civic puzzle sprint,” participants will practice strategies for scaffolding inquiry, explore how identity and context shape urban experiences, and gain tools to help students see themselves as both designers of, and designed by, the city.

15:40 – 16:40
TEA BREAK
15:40 – 16:40
Curated Insights
C1
Lynette Tan

Chief Executive Officer, Space Faculty

Dream – Design – Do

What does it take to turn a childhood dream into reality?

In this inspiring talk, Lynette Tan shares how her fascination with the cosmos grew into a lifelong quest that culminated in her own voyage to space. Her story is more than a mission log—it is a reflection on the power of curiosity, the courage to face the unknown, and the tenacity to overcome setbacks.

Lynette shows why these qualities are not just admirable, but essential tools for achieving the seemingly impossible. While her story reaches to the stars, she hopes it will inspire others to pursue their own bold dreams, whatever form they may take.

C1
Cesar Harada

Founder, MakerBay

Who Are Singapore’s Next Pioneers?

Our relationship with nature, others, and ourselves has grown adversarial. We have built systems that exploit the living world, fuel conflict, and constrain children with limiting beliefs that perpetuate destructive cycles. At the same time, technological and climate shifts outpace our ability to adapt. What kind of education truly serves our children in this context?

Inventor and educator Cesar Harada proposes a bold alternative: transitioning from scarcity to abundance, fear to love, and competition to collaboration. Through an integrated talk and workshop, participants will explore how design education can nurture pioneers who harmonize with nature, others, and self.

The session invites educators to:

  • Reframe design education for nature, others, and self
  • Reflect on their own transitions as educators 
  • Imagine how education systems can evolve toward resilience, curiosity, and abundance

Together, we will co-create visions of education that align with children’s authentic interests and measure progress in more meaningful, human ways—illuminating a future driven by love, imagination, and collective courage.

Creative Labs
Nikki Martyn

Founder, Chief Visionary Officer, The Love Lab: Child Futures Innovation PlaySpace

The Consentaverse Experience: Playful Tools for Digital Wisdom & Emotional Safety

Children today are not just using technology—they are growing up inside it.

This experiential workshop introduces The Consentaverse, a playful, love-informed approach to cultivating digital discernment, identity, and emotional safety. Rooted in the belief that children are shaped by their experiences, participants will explore how technology influences nervous system development, relational capacity, and literacy.

Through reflective practices anchored in the DesignSingapore Dispositions, educators will activate empathy, curiosity, courage, and optimism to design digital environments where children flourish. Walk away with strategies for reimagining digital education as a space of healing, agency, and human becoming.

Vincent Siu

Founder and Lead Producer, Press Start Studios

Play, Write, Grow: Reflecting on Our Creative Prowess and Process through Fiero!

What happens when creativity meets play?

In this interactive workshop, participants will dive into Fiero!, a three-act storytelling card game designed by Vincent Siu. Together, they’ll co-create wild ideas, legendary characters, and unforgettable stories across 20 different genres.

The session goes beyond gameplay: Vince will guide a reflection on how narrative design and collaborative play unlock new ways of seeing creativity—as diverse, personal, and deeply social. Educators, writers, designers, and even those who “don’t think they’re creative” will leave inspired, with practical insights into building environments that spark imagination and collective storytelling.

Ng Fong Yee

Child Culture Designer

Curious Creatures: Facilitating Collaboration through Speculative Design

How can play spark collective imagination?

In this hands-on workshop, participants will transform everyday objects into “curious creatures” and design their speculative habitats. Through playful making, they will experience how collaboration unfolds differently between children and adults, and how participation can surface in diverse, unexpected ways.

The session demonstrates how play-led facilitation encourages curiosity, imagination, and empathy—inviting participants to think and feel through making. No art or design background is required; only an openness to explore, invent, and co-create.

16:40 – 16:50
Embark on your next adventure
 
13:00 – 14:45
Communities of Interest

International Workshop on Design Education, Research and Practice

Nadya Patel

Assistant Professor, Singapore Institute of Technology

Karin Aue

Senior Lecturer, Program Lead Master of Design in Integrated Design, National University of Singapore

In an era of rapid change, design education must move beyond established norms to remain relevant, impactful, and inclusive. This workshop brings together educators, practitioners, and students to reimagine how we teach and learn design—laying the groundwork for an edited book that captures diverse visions for the future of the field.

Through collaborative activities, including the Sparked card game, participants will critically question and reframe current paradigms, explore futures-oriented and cross-disciplinary pedagogies, and experiment with playful tools for dialogue. Together, they will identify strategies for embedding courage and curiosity into design learning, while co-creating visions for education that embrace uncertainty, diversity, and resilience.

Grounded in the DesignSingapore Council’s Design Dispositions, this session blends intellectual sparring with playful provocation—inviting participants to imagine new roles for design in shaping equitable, sustainable, and creative futures.

14:45 – 16:40
Creative Labs
B5
Marta Miguel

Senior Academic Mentor, Temasek Polytechnic

Rachna Johri

Deputy Director , Temasek Polytechnic’s Learning Academy

Guardians of Gaia: Imagining Resilient Futures Through Collaborative Play

How can play help us grapple with the complexity of sustainability?

Guardians of Gaia is an immersive board game that brings systems thinking to life through collaborative play. In this workshop, participants take on “wicked problems” — deeply entangled social and ecological challenges — and discover how everyday choices ripple across global systems.

Through gameplay, participants will experience systems thinking not just as a concept, but as a way of seeing and responding to complexity. They will explore how curiosity sparks critical inquiry, how empathy enables inclusive and regenerative design responses, and how playful approaches can inspire resilience and collective healing.

Aligned with the summit’s dispositions of curiosity and empathy, this session demonstrates how game-based learning can foster transdisciplinary perspectives, shift mindsets, and empower learners to navigate uncertainty with care and creativity.

16:40 – 16:50
MOVEMENTS
 
13:00 – 16:40
COMMUNITIES OF INTEREST

Collective Conversations: Nurturing Design Mindsets in Schools

13:00 – 15:10

Collective Conversations

Step into a community space where educators, partners, and curious minds engage in a lively exchange, sharing stories and sparking ideas around Design Mindsets through Learning by Design projects.

These five 30-minute sessions will be filled with honest stories, clever hacks, and eureka moments. Jump in and be a part of the conversation!

For deeper one-on-one exchanges, be sure to swing by the Human Library booths to trade stories and insights with educators.

15:10 – 15:40

Human Libraries

Stop by the booths for deeper one-on-one exchanges with our educators.

15:40 – 16:40

Collective Conversations Continues

16:40 – 16:50
MOVEMENTS
 
16:50 – 17:30
Collective Reflections

Spend a moment to look back on all the wonders you’ve experienced, and how you can bring them to life in your own classrooms.

17:30 – 17:45
Closing Session

Join Dawn Lim, Executive Director of the DesignSingapore Council, as she lights the way forward to the next chapter in design and education.