The Experience Design Project Incubator
14 week incubator focused on developing a project of your own
Join a carefully selected cohort of talented people designing dynamic new experiences
Remote sessions will connect you with a diverse community of creators from various parts of the world
$2500; payment plans and partial scholarships available
Summer 2021
Applications are closed.
Read about our new cohort here.
This incubator will be a space to develop an experience design project (which we define pretty loosely--it can be a business around making experiences or an immersive project you want to produce) of your own. This program is structured around creating community and accountability for emerging immersive design projects that will outlast the timeframe of the class. Using a hybrid format of workshop, creative prompts, and discussions, we’ll delve into your ideas and how to manifest them in the world, moving from concept to R&D to production. We will have occasional assigned readings, as well as guest critics that will help guide our theoretical explorations, all while giving one another support and feedback about your work in progress. This is as much about process as it is about producing something meaningful.
Calendar
Weekend 1: May 22-23, 12-5 pm EST // 9 am-2 pm PST
Weekend 2: Aug 14-15 OR Aug 21-22*,
12-5 pm EST // 9 am-2 pm PST
*You will attend only one of these weekends. Two cohorts will run simultaneously and half of the final presentations will fall on each weekend.
Weekly Incubator Meeting Times:
Mondays; 12-3 pm EST // 9 am -12 pm PST
May 31st - Aug 16th
Weeks alternate between large group and accountability pod meetings
Structure
2 weekend intensives bookend the incubator
3-hour seminar+workshop every other week, held remotely
Assigned accountability pods to strategize and problem-solve individual projects biweekly between large group sessions
1-on-1 consultations with Odyssey Works Directors
Tuition
$2500, including books and class materials (members are responsible for purchasing any materials they need particular to their project)
+Payment plans and partial scholarships are available.
Featured Project
Mesabi Trail Experience, Margo Gray
Incubator 2020 cohort
“The Odyssey Works Incubator is like running through a creative downpour. It provided a lot of input and exposure to new ideas, and also the impetus to push forward on a particular project.”
Your Facilitators
Abraham Burickson and Ayden LeRoux
The Odyssey Works Directors have been collaborating for nearly ten years and have led workshops at universities such as MICA, CCA, UT Austin, Gallaudet, and Fordham, as well as at international companies and organizations. Read more about the two of them here.
Guest Lecturers and Critics
Damian Madray
Damian is the founder of Presence, a distribution tool to help creators of experiences find sustainability in their work. His work at TheGlint has been featured in the New York Times, Bold Italics, Huffington Post & many others. He also led experience design for EQ’s “PLANET HOME”, an experiential summit that connected 10K+ attendees with environmental problems to shift behavior. He thinks deeply about the role of experiential design as a tool to expand human consciousness and started EXPDSN to have this conversation.
Gabe Smedresman
Gabe Smedresman is the founder of First Person Travel, known for its tech-guided travel adventures. He built Charter, an extraordinarily flexible experience design platform available to our cohort to help them run remote experiences that involve many moving parts. He is also the founder of the Adventure Design Group and the Co-Founder of the Immersive Design Summit.
Jenny Gottstein
Jenny is an experiential designer in IDEO's Play Lab, chief fun organizer at Vote With Us and Game Save America, lead recycling party-enthusiast at Score! Pop Up Swap, research director at Donate Your Laugh To Science, co-producer of SF Immersive Design Week & enthusiastic designer of Zombie Apocalypse Disaster Preparedness Games.
Lea Redmond
Lea Redmond reveals the extraordinary hiding in the ordinary: a saltshaker, a penny, hand gestures, clouds. Lea creates books, toys, games and small adventures that invite humans of all ages to be curious, playful, and kind. Visit Lea’s world of wonder at LeaRedmond.com.
Erika Chong Shuch
Erika Chong Shuch is a performance maker, choreographer and director interested in expanding ideas around how performance is created and shared. Erika’s most recent project, For You, is a dedicated practice of performance making with Ryan Tacata and Rowena Richie that brings strangers together for shared encounters and considers performance making as gift giving.
“The Incubator was amazing!! Socially and professionally, it was an invaluable opportunity to connect and grow with an impeccably curated group of badasses.”
“My time in this incubator was one of the most fulfilling, happiness and creativity-generating times of my life...I know how much the Incubator helped me through the last months of the pandemic in 2020 because I feel such an absence right now [that it’s over]...Because I was surrounded by so many great minds, I felt a kind of creative energy that fueled at least 4 different projects during my time. ”