The Gym

Davy de Lepper - Homohooligan

The Homohooligan Protest Scarf is a wearable symbol of strength and solidarity with the LGBTQIA+ community. The design sparks conversations about identity and equality with phrases like 'queer is a state of mind,' 'gender is a construct,' and 'trans rights are human rights.'

'Homohooligan' started as a local social design project in collaboration with Tante Netty in Woensel-West. There, instances of homophobia had been reported. To avoid the 'standard' rainbow, the soccer scarf was chosen as a new symbol.

In addition to the Protest Scarf, a film was made in collaboration with Tante Netty and local primary school students about and with the LGBTQIA+ community. The project's message transcended Woensel-West, and Homohooligan quickly grew into a larger movement with a shared message of love for the queer community. Today, there are about a thousand Homohooligans wearing the Protest Scarf or the recently released Protest T-shirt.

Davy de Lepper is a multifaceted professional working as a brand strategist, creative storyteller, and visual communicator. With a keen eye for design and a strategic mindset, he crafts compelling brand narratives, using visual mediums to draw in audiences. Davy's expertise lies in seamlessly merging creativity and strategy, resulting in impactful, educative and activist projects.

Floor Hofman - You Are in My Story

As part of an artist-in-residence programme, documentary filmmaker Floor Hofman spent several months in a close-knit community for people with developmental disabilities. During her stay, Hofman provided residents with cameras to capture moments in their daily lives. This way, Hofman wished to get to know their view of the world. She also conducted interviews with residents, parents, and caretakers, gathering diverse perspectives to help in understanding the meaning of the residents' recorded moments. 

This collaborative project led Hofman, along with the caretakers and parents, to rethink their expectations. The resulting documentary, ‘You Are in My Story,’ portrays this process, incorporating footage filmed by the residents themselves. These recordings invite viewers into a world where vulnerability and resilience come together.

Floor Hofman is a documentary filmmaker, designer, and passionate interviewer. She co-creates with various cultural and social groups to tell stories. The stories are small and personal, and shine a light on that which seems ordinary and is therefore overlooked. At the same time, they address broader, overarching socio-cultural themes. For this film, Hofman participated in the 'Re-creatie' artist-in-residence programme, based at the residential care community 'De Heygraeff' (one of the locations within the Reinaerde health organisation).

Ink Social Design - Mensenkenners

Public spaces too often contain barriers for people with disabilities. Some of these are physical obstacles. Those can be dealt with quickly. Most of them, however, reside with the people who work in public spaces. They struggle with discomfort, ignorance, and unintentional awkwardness. The consequence: people with disabilities do not always feel welcomed, taken seriously, or connected. ‘Mensenkenners’ (‘Empathy Champions') is a scalable, accessible online training programme. It allows employees of stores, museums, and restaurants to actively train their inclusivity muscle.

Would you like to train your inclusivity muscle as well? Hop on the bicycle and get closer to the world of someone with a disability. What is it like to have a hearing or seeing disability? And how can we make contact with each other? You will learn more about all the questions that you never dared to ask people with disabilities. This way, difficult interactions become more comfortable, and public spaces become inviting for everyone.

Ink is a social design studio based in Amsterdam, led by Anna Noyons. They combine behavioural sciences with creative disciplines to design solutions with real impact on the social issues of today and those of our collective future. Driven by co-creation with their partners and the communities they aim to reach, Ink offers a new perspective to design a better world together.

Reem Saleh & Jodie Bécard - Hors-jeu (Offside)

While studying sports associations in France, one sport stood out: para-hockey. In this hockey variant, players sit in a sled and use hockey sticks to navigate on ice or on wheels. With semi-professional teams and amateur clubs, this sport grows community bonds. It also reaches a large audience of disabled and able-bodied athletes.

The existing standardised equipment does not meet the unique needs of each player. Working closely with a parasports amateur club, Saleh and Bécard came up with a flexible, affordable open-source hockey sled. The designers reimagined the materials and the production of sports gear. Instead of using standard moulded parts, they employed cutting and folding methods like those used in crafting patterns and tailoring. The aesthetics of the sled were also reconsidered, mainly by drawing inspiration from urban sports equipment – gear that is meant for the outdoors and serves as a means of self-expression for the athlete.

Reem Saleh and Jodie Bécard are industrial designers based in Paris. Saleh uses various pop culture media, such as product and graphic design, video games and writing, to tell stories of solidarity between people. Bécard focuses on material research and pre-/post-industrial techniques to envision new ways of producing objects. Together, they aim to make sports more inclusive and accessible through design. ‘Hors-jeu’ has been developed in collaboration with the Blois Handisport sled-hockey team.

Kexin Hao - Total Body Workout

‘Total Body Workout’ leads you through a ‘total body’ experience in which history unfolds not in order of time, but in a head-to-toe sequence. It explores how our bodies are influenced by the times we live in. How national agendas and political ideology are connected to the way our bodies communicate. And how our body's memories become part of the dominant historical stories. Finally, it asks how we can live in a historical, totalised body?

This project looks at nationwide physical exercise routines and mass training performances in Asia, the Eastern Bloc, and the United States. It proposes a different way of moving our bodies. Here and now, we work out the total body. 

Kexin Hao is a visual artist and designer born in Beijing and based in The Netherlands. Her practice is a mix of design and performance, and she likes to challenge the boundaries between art and non-art. Using a daring visual language, her work constantly swings between a close-up focus on personal stories and zooming out to collective narratives. In her recent practice, Kexin investigates the themes of body, rituals, health, labour, and collective memory.

Graduation work | Royal Academy of Art, The Hague | 2021
Tutors: Ruben Pater & Thomas Buxo
Photography & cinematography: Helena Roig & Pedro Gossler
Music: Dima Ibrahim
Makeup: Mijs Goosen
Fitness supervisor: Leon Lapa Pereira

Gabriel Fontana - Fluid Field

Starting from the habit to making all things the same, regular sports fields expect all bodies to fit specific body standards. The sizes of traditional sports fields are determined by binary categories. That is to say: their size depends on whether they are meant for bodies identifying as male or female, for adults or children, or for those with full physical abilities or those with some limitations. 

This way, the design of sports fields sorts and separates human bodies into fixed groups. 'Fluid Field' defies this traditional approach. The new playing area constantly changes shape and dimensions, avoiding any fixed definition of the body.

Gabriel Fontana is a creative director who explores ways to reshape sports for upcoming societal shifts. He designs new team sports that change group dynamics and encourage empathy. In 2020, he developed Multiform for the city of Rotterdam; an educational programme that contributes to inclusive physical education. His games have been played in schools across Europe, at Nike World Headquarters and were showcased in renowned venues like MoMA and W139 Amsterdam.