A man with a dream to make physical bank notes asked Emma to design some special money bills, including both ants and cosmic microwave background radiation...

Work money is a new medium of exchange that allows you to trade working time. Every hour is worth the same: 1 hour simply costs 1 hour.

For engage Rotterdam, I developed and hosted a workshop series for the kick-off weekend in October 2025, in Witte de With kwartier AKA Cool Zuid. As the Creative Research Crew, a fluid group of participants of different backgrounds, we approached Cool Zuid from different creative angles, seeking alternative perspectives. We tested ways for residents, makers, and doers to collaborate more effectively. Each workshop in this series generated material that would then feed into the next sessions: from stories and newspapers, to neighborhood maps and posters.

ThemeWork is an ongoing series of events hosted at Extra Practice, where we collectively work on important and serious unpaid tasks (like filing taxes), but with a unique theme. The theme changes every session, and is reflected in the space’s decor, the snacks, the online communication, and sometimes in the dress code. Instead of isolating ourselves with our laptops, we enhance the value of our unpaid work by making it a fun and collective experience. At the same time, we are conducting important research: do we work better if we imagine ourselves in a wellness resort? Or a daycare center? Dressed like cowboys?

If you want to attend the next ThemeWork session, keep an eye on the @extrapractice instagram page.

United Mental States is a collection of mental-health-inspired islands envisioned by youth from Brabant, that were created during multiple workshops Emma developed with Mu Hybrid Art House over the last year, then translated into a spatial work for their 25-year-anniversary-exhibition Hybrid Tales For Hybrid Times. The various continents in this ‘3D collage’ represent common States of young minds as associative visual landscapes; the 37 min film accompanying the islands, shows personal interviews about the current state of their mental health, with their self-imagined ‘mental landscapes’ as backdrops.

Emma absolutely loved working with young people, working on serious topics, working in Brabant, working with neurodiverse kids, working with MU, working with her hands, working with friends. She would like to do more of it and get better at it.

If you’ve ever experienced an escape room, you will know the thrill of looking around for clues, finding patterns in everything, and feeling like the hero in a real adventure story. For under €30 you can have a fun hour trying to crack codes and find the key to your fake escape. But escape rooms are just superficial entertaining experiences you can buy, and I want to spend my time productively and meaningfully. I want to play the lead role in my own adventure. I want real experiences!

I want to travel the world to discover myself, go on a retreat to find myself. Lift up my soul on the yoga mat, but also keep both feet on the ground; need to stay down to earth. Straightforward. Got to move forward. Set goals, reach my full potential. Push myself, be more productive. Dream big, trust the universe. Let go of fears and stress. Do what I want! Enjoy life, live it to the fullest. Have fun, be free, escape!

The 6-week course I co-developed as part of Translocal Lives, a research project by Amanda Paz Alencar and Camila Sarria Sanz. I got to teach 14 newcomers in Rotterdam to translate their ideas on place-making and belonging into short films, using their smartphones and open-source software. We screened the final films in KINO Rotterdam.

An Introduction into Non-Professional Modes of Digital Storytelling. Workshop created for the MA Critical Inquiry Lab at the Design Academy Eindhoven in collaboration with Benjamin Earl. The workshop program and resources can be found here.