CASE STUDIES
EXAMPLES OF PROJECTS, CLIENTS AND MOMENTS OF MEANING
I curate and create experience designed to shift your perspective to see the wonder in the world, helping people to birth their creative ideas and design their own unique path filled with moments of meaning.
But, you may well ask, what does that actually MEAN?
And what does being a ritual designer, a creative facilitator and idea doula really entail?
There is no simple answer to the question as every single case and client receives a unique, personalised creative process.
But there’s nothing like a story or two to give you a sense of what the reality can look like.
Below, you’ll find a selection of case studies to give you some idea of what it is I do.
And there are many more stories I can share. Feel free to get in touch if you would like to find out more.
Trusted By
“Isness” - Ritual and Experience Design in VR
I worked on - and in fact named - this incredible VR project, Isness - which was written about in the MIT Technology Review in August 2022. The subheading reads:
“On key metrics, a VR experience elicited a response indistinguishable from subjects who took medium doses of LSD or magic mushrooms.”
It takes you into a transformational state that rivals psychedelics for its capacity to trigger a mystical experience, yet is entirely drug free.
My contribution was to design a ritual to open and close the experience, write and record the voiceover narrating the guided instructions and to co-create the flow of the scenes, including all audio-visual, physical and imaginative components.
The project was written up into a scientific paper in which I am cited as a co-author, with the astonishing title “Isness: Using Multi-Person VR to Design Peak Mystical-Type Experiences Comparable to Psychedelics.”
Rituals for Creativity: One to One Coaching
I worked with Louise Winter, one of the authors of the book ‘We All Know How This Ends’, to support the writing process in the two months leading up to the publisher’s deadline.
“Sessions with Tiu helped me to find some clarity when I couldn't see the wood for the trees. Together we created a series of rituals which put me in the right headspace to write the book.
Having time on Tiu's boat every week gave me the space I needed to work out what I needed and how I could give it to myself.
Tiu helped me to let go of things which were blocking my creativity.”
Louise Winter, Funeral Director and Founder at Poetic Endings, Author and Co-Founder of Life. Death. Whatever.
“I describe Tiu de Haan as the ‘Marina Abramovic’ of coaching.
That’s shorthand for saying Tiu brings an unusual creative, artistic, shape-shifting, shamanic genius to her coaching.”
Experience Design for Joy: The Pronoia Project
I developed a 2-hour workshop to take place in an urban setting, committing random acts of kindness and covert beauty, where participants learn how to interact with the city as a source of connection, playfulness, sensory delight and creative possibilities.
We explore the idea of seeing our world and our challenges through the lens of “pronoia” where everything can be interpreted as a blessing in disguise, and then go out on the streets to engage in joyful acts of beautiful intervention, learning practical, playful tools to transform our world through the deliberate spreading of joy and delight.
I have run this workshop with a variety of groups, from city planning students to quantum physicists to creative entrepreneurs.
“ Having been through the range of similar workshops in the Silicon Valley tech world, Tiu’s approach is better than any of them.
It was mischievous and thought-provoking. ”
Grief Game Design Ritual
Apart of Me is a multi-award-winning therapeutic game, co-created by experts in child psychology and bereaved young people, that translates bereavement-counselling techniques into a magical 3D digital world.
A game designed to deal with grief necessarily means that everyone involved in its making knows the pain of loss, including the children and young people whose feedback and needs are incorporated into the design at every stage.
At a design and development day which focussed on one of the most sensitive areas of the world of the game, I was invited to offer a grief ritual to everyone present, games designers, charity founders and children alike, allowing for the dead loved ones whose absence was so keenly felt to be honoured, named and thanks for their part in the day.
This work continues in that I have been invited back to design and deliver another ritual for a funding event for the parent charity, to take place in January 2023.
Godfather Ritual for Bereaved Toddler
When a young father died suddenly and unexpectedly, leaving behind his partner and their 2 year old son, the mother asked me to help her create a Father’s Day ceremony to welcome 7 godfathers into her son’s life.
We co-created a playful but nonetheless emotional ritual, to celebrate the positive male role models in her son’s life and to invite them to be there for him as he grows up.
“I asked Tiu if she would create a godfathering ceremony for my son shortly after his father died. She listened carefully to all my half-formed ideas and with a very gentle ear – and helped to bring them into reality, enhancing them with her own magical touches.
Everyone who attended was surprised and moved at what a sensitive, memorable and fun event it was. And my son loved it most of all, which was a beautiful thing at a challenging time in our lives.”
Hair, Ritual and Neuroscience: a special event for the Rubin Museum, New York City
I collaborated with world renowned neuroscientist Beau Lotto and his Lab of Misfits to design, record and deliver a special ritual working with ideas of creativity, resilience and - hair.
At a ticketed event in New York’s Rubin Museum, we took the audience through an intimate exploration of meaning making and how our hair can be an unexpected way into connection, creativity and a shift in perception.
The event included the participation of the audience in a shared ritual, where each person had their head held and their hair stroked and brushed by their neighbour, with a guided meditation led by me that took them through an inner journey designed in collaboration with Beau Lotto.
The Path - 1 year, 6 women
The Path is a year long immersive programme with 6 women, spanning a series of 7 day long experiential adventures in person, including a day in nature where I taught them how to find magic portals into other worlds, which is what these women have just experienced in this photo...
We also mastered the art of Ritual Design, with each of the women supporting each other in creating their own rituals for a variety of shifts and thresholds, and spent a full weekend together on retreat in a beautiful venue in the English countryside. And in between in person sessions, we met not in zoom but as light beings in VR (see the MIT article above for a flavour) - for everything about this year is based in wonder.
The Path balances profound and playful group experiences with individual one to one journeys for each participant, walking them through their very own bespoke transformational process over 12 hours of one to one time with me over the course of the year.
Here’s what one participant had to say:
I am so incredibly grateful for the journey I’ve had on the Path.
This space for me was a grief circle, a creativity masterclass, a mystical unlocking, a way to greater connection with myself and others, and adventure (an incredible adventure) and a place where I have experienced the wealth of female presence and permission.
Through this work, I have found new ways of being that have cascaded into my life in such vibrant and delicate ways that I can only keep going forward with these opportunities and these women.
Gratitude really isn’t a big enough word.
Applications for the next Path is currently open…
Ritual Design - the Self Marriage of Grace Gelder
In 2014, I was asked to design a self marriage ceremony for artist and photographer, Grace Gelder.
After giving a talk about ritual design at a festival that summer, where I mentioned the experience of creating a self-marriage, a journalist approached me to ask if he could write about the story and when Grace agreed, it was published in the Guardian.
Within 24 hours, it had gone viral.
The story of her self marriage became a global phenomenon, creating headlines in national newspapers and tabloids the world over. Grace was invited to talk shows in the USA and featured on many radio and TV shows in the UK and abroad, and when the noise died down, it transpired that the ritual she had commissioned me to create went on to inspire many others to marry themselves in turn.
PAST PROJECT
Eyeshine
In 2005, I founded a successful not-for-profit to connect parents and children through playing in nature, which was granted £238k in BIG Lottery funding, and went on to run residential workshops for hundreds of families.
From the first pilot residential weekend in a treehouse village in a forest, through to the final grant report, filled with testimonials from many hundreds of families, the project was a living - and successful - experiment in the possibility of wonder.
Time and again, the team witnessed increased levels of confidence, playfulness, closeness and connection within the families who attended the weekends and in many cases saw visible transformations in participants of all ages who quite literally left with their eyes shining, experiencing renewed levels of joy, inspiration and imagination.
In terms of how this was achieved, Eyeshine was also a living experiment in how to create a project, realise a vision, manage a team and run a company with creativity and excellence as well as compassion and deep connection.
At the end of the grant, the funders stated that Eyeshine was 'exceptional'.
