The Client

The NeverDoneBefore (NDB) community is a global collective of facilitators who find community together, and grow the next facilitation trends through curated workshops, training, and self-started initiatives.

The Brief

24 hour NeverDoneBefore 2021 Festival, founder Myriam Hadnes wanted to create an equally joyful space on Welo for her community to use all year round.

There were 3 key areas of the space:
- A workshop area where members could gather for the events and debrief afterwards, and have
- Connection areas for one-to-one conversations and group discussions
- A co-working area that affords both solo and group working, and rooms to host meetings

Visually the space needed to
- Be joyful , warm and inviting
- Have enough space for a growing number of global guests, but not feel too large
- Accommodate the 'Greenhouse' theme that had been set for the year of 2022Following in the footsteps of the

Co-designing the experience on Mural

All designs start with discovery sessions, whereby we map out the needs and desires of the community (based on user feedback), and branch out ideas into how we could fulfil those needs, and what types of spaces and visuals would be most relevant

Myriam and I used Mural as a way to collaborate on the discovery, planning, and to present and review the work at the different stages.

Concepts

With so many ways to develop a space with numerous areas, I set about exploring how the space could take shape, and annotating the key designs so it was easy to start imagining how the wireframes could go from grey to colour.

The Outcome

The final design culminated in :
- a circular greenhouse that was home to the workshops, debrief areas, and intimate conversations
- a lower garden that branches off into the separate areas for helping each other, and co-working

The three main areas were defined by the core NDB values of Generosity, Risk and Respect. Housed in a playful Community Garden, we incorporated traditional elements like seedling beds and a toolshed, alongside more frivolous elements like a lego raft, sandpit and a hand glider.