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A custom-tailored, life-altering performance designed for a single person, blurring the lines between life and art. These experiences can last from a day to several months and are meant to be profound and transformative.
Odyssey Works began in 2001 with two friends, Abraham Burickson and Matthew Purdon, taking a long walk along the cliffs of BIG SUR. An architect and a THEATRE MAKER, they asked, What would happen if we knew who our audience was and designed specifically for them? What followed was more than two decades of experiments, collaborating with HUNDREDS OF ARTISTS across disciplines, establishing the form of an Odyssey1: weekend-long, weeks-long, or months-long experiences for one-person audiences.

Who We Are
Odyssey Works is currently directed by Abraham Burickson and AYDEN LEROUX, who have been collaborating since 2012, when Ayden came aboard and made a book documenting an Odyssey, Isolation and Amazement (Samsara Press, 2013). Over time the group developed a deep understanding of how to design for TRANSFORMATION, and in 2016, Burickson and LeRoux began to organize the research of the group into a new approach to meaningful experience design, shared in books, workshops, lectures, and a YEAR-LONG CERTIFICATE PROGRAM.
Together they have directed Odysseys, co-authored Odyssey Works: Transformative Experiences for an Audience of One (Princeton Architectural Press, 2016), developed a discipline-defining pedagogy, and projected experience design into wider public understanding. In 2023, Burickson published Experience Design: A Participatory Manifesto, which laid the groundwork for a more meaningful approach to the emergent field.
On top of its own programming, the team has LECTURED, led workshops, taught classes, and designed experiences for such places as the The Stanford D-School, The Maryland Institute College of Art, Yale University, Gallaudet University, Central St. Martins, as well as The Exploratorium, The Cleveland Museum, The Future of Storytelling, The Modern Elder Academy, The College of Extraordinary Experiences, The World Experience Organization, The Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, and many more.
Odyssey Works is also the center of a COMMUNITY of designers dedicated to the development of a better approach to making, one focused on empathy, intelligence, and impact.




ABRAHAM BURICKSON Co-Founder of Odyssey Works and Co-Director of the Experience Design Certificate Program, has spent more than two decades exploring the relationship between what we make and how it is experienced. Trained in architecture at Cornell University and in poetry and playwriting at the Michener Center for Writers, he has also studied the transformative power of designed experience with the Whirling Dervishes of Turkey, the Shuar of the Ecuadorian Amazon, and with countless artists, designers, and students through Odyssey Works. He is also the founder of The Long Architecture Project, which rethinks architectural practice from the perspective of Experience Design. He has won prizes, lectured and taught widely, given a TEDxtalk, and was once hired by German television to kidnap an American skateboarding champion. His book on Experience Design was published by Yale University Press in 2023.

AYDEN LEROUX is the Co-Director of Odyssey Works and Co-Founder of the Experience Design Certificate Program. An advocate of interdisciplinary and genre-defying creative work, she holds art and writing degrees with extraordinarily long titles from New York University and University of California San Diego. She writes extensively about disability and sexuality, and her essays, fiction, and criticism have been published widely. Her praxis is informed by experience in artist collectives, worker-owned cooperatives, and farming, and seeks to cultivate radical hospitality, GENEROSITY, and intimacy. When she was eight, she told her parents she wanted to dress up as a painter for Halloween. Thinking she meant house painter rather than fine art painter, they unwittingly opened a decades-long existential inquiry about the intersection of domestic life and creative practice.

SIOBHAN O’LOUGHLIN (Creative Strategy Lead) is a bi-coastal performance artist whose small scale, intimate works are all based in creating community through creativity. She is best known for Broken Bone Bathtub, an award-winning solo show in an actual bathroom, for which the feature length documentary just completed its first 8 city tour. Her interactive online series, Please Don't Touch the Artist, inspired an annual in person creative retreat called Please Do Vibe. Siobhán has flirted through your computer screen and on stage in My Heart Goes Zoom, enchanted your ears through an audio interface in Every Day I’ll Hope, and embraced your avatar through virtual reality in The Fantastical of Now. Follow @siobhansolo on all platforms, or keep in touch: https://www.siobhanoloughlin.com

SOPHIE LARSMON is an Associate Director of Odyssey Works and an Immersive Director & Experience Designer known for her unconventional theatrical productions and innovative audience personalization techniques. As a London-based Creative Director she's currently developing a ground-breaking Location-Based Experience to open in 2025. Sophie previously led Any One Thing, a pioneering Immersive Theatre & Software Development company, where she collaborated closely with Abraham on projects like 'The Book of Separation'. Her background includes stints at prestigious venues like The National Theatre and THE WEST END, alongside founding SoLar Productions, which supported emerging theatre makers. Sophie's commitment to dramaturgy and narrative innovation shines through her diverse portfolio, spanning traditional and immersive theatre.

TAOUBA KHELIFA (Program Manager) is a creative director and communications strategist with over ten years of experience in experience design and storytelling. She brings curiosity and exploration into her work and loves SOLVING communication challenges by designing innovative and transformative solutions. Taouba is an alumni of the 2022 Odyssey Works Experience Design Certificate Program. She is based in Canada, but her heart lives around the world. She enjoys capturing and telling stories through photography and film.
Faculty

BROOKE VIEGUT is a narrative-driven experience designer, audience-centric theater maker, design critic, donut connoisseur, collector of silly little things, educator, and the creative lead at for play.
Working at the intersection of play, community, ephemerality, and radical joy, their multidisciplinary approach has created work for audiences of 30 to 3,000. Past collaborators include Mailchimp/Invisible North, Tribeca X, De Niro Con, Emursive/The McKittrick Hotel (home of Sleep No More), 3D Tech Fest, RWS Global, Virgin Voyages, National Audubon Society, and Historic Hudson Valley among others.
Brooke will be faculty for the full 2026 year.

KRISHNAN UNNIKRISHNAN's journey to remix oral storytelling tradition through modern technology has thrust him onto an uncharted path of interdisciplinary and emerging mediums including XR, live roleplaying, collaborative ritual-making, and generative AI art. Crafting hi-tech make-believe with embodied stagecraft, he invites you to participate in emergent community experiments for personal and cultural transformation through the sacred power of play.

TIU DE HAAN (she/her) is a ritual designer, creative facilitator and idea doula, specializing in reminding people how to shift their perspective to see the magic in the MUNDANE. She works with individuals, teams and global organizations helping people connect to their creativity and wake up their sense of wonder. Learn more: https://www.tiudehaan.com/
Guests

Amy Segreti is a certified experience designer (OW '22), artist, mentor and relational wayfinder who uses experience design principles to admit more love in the moment. Through her creative consultancy, Our Circuitries, she works with individuals and partnerships — in love and in business — transforming flat encounters into right-sized connections through presence, invitation and devotion.
Her methodology draws from over a decade of direct study with visionary leaders in experience design, Jungian psychology, and relational counseling, including Third Rail Projects, Esther Perel, Authentic Relating International, Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés, and of course, Odyssey Works. Her talks/workshops on relational alchemy are featured on TED.com and at the annual WXO Summits and WXO Campfires.

BARB GROTH is founder and creative director of the Nomadic School of Wonder, a traveling troupe of wondermakers who create “adventures in awe” rooted in nature, art, COMMUNITY and play. Barb has led creative teams at the most imaginative and iconic brands on the planet — Walt Disney Imagineering, Google, Alphabet and Meow Wolf.

ERIC CLOUGH is the founder of 212box, a multidisciplinary ARCHITECTURE and design firm known for innovative projects like the "Mystery on Fifth Avenue" apartment and numerous Christian Louboutin boutiques. Educated at Washington University in St. Louis and Yale University, Clough integrates elements of architecture, product DESIGN, and art into his transformative designs.

LAURA HALL is an artist, writer, puzzle-maker, immersive and narrative designer living in Portland, Oregon, where they create video games, immersive experiences, and escape rooms. She is the author of Katamari Damacy for Boss Fight Books and Planning Your Escape for Simon & Schuster.

Lea Redmond seeks the extraordinary hiding in the ordinary and wants to share it with you. She makes things, books, and activities that invite humans of all ages to be CURIOUS, PLAYFUL, AND KIND. Lea is the author of Knit The Sky, Wonder Hunt, Paint Chip Poetry, and the bestselling Letters To My… series of keepsake journals. As the Postmaster of the world’s smallest post service, she has charmed thousands with her tiny mail transcriptions. Lea gathers people for workshops, letter writing, and other creative services in her Tearoom of a Thousand Wonders in Oakland, California. Keep in touch at LeaRedmond.com.

Lynn Kiang is a Senior Lecturer at the University of the Arts in London. She is co-founder of Dome, a multi-disciplinary design studio founded in Brooklyn. She previously led teams in experience design at SYPartners, collaborating with strategists and company leaders in transforming their brand. She was a designer at Local Projects, overseeing graphic, interaction, and media design for museums and cultural institutions. Her work has received numerous awards and recognition including from Communication Arts, D&AD, Art Directors Club, Core77, Print Magazine, Type Directors Club, SEGD, ASLA, and AIGA.

Matthew Purdon is Founder, CEO & Chief Creative Officer at Woander World, where he develops premium, family-first immersive experiences including Wylding Woods. A pioneer of participatory storytelling, he co-founded Odyssey Works with Abe Burickson and created The Campus Beat, the first improvised, interactive sitcom for the web in association with ImprovOympic & Del Close.

MEGAN LIVINGSTON works to create meaningful and transformative experiences through individual and collaborative work in Baltimore City — she is currently seeking LIBERATION frames everywhere she looks, so that she can build on a practice of self-transformation and usher in a praxis of worldbuilding, not for the sake of narrative or entertainment, but to contribute to the MANIFESTATION of a world we might all actually want to live in. She is a Core Creator with Submersive Productions, a company member with The Acme Corporation, an Odyssey Works Advisory Board member, Communications Manager for The Baltimore Rock Opera Society, and the Program Manager at 901 Arts. IG: @meganlivingstonlives

RACHEL EVE GINSBERG is a strategist and experience designer who consults on initiatives of all kinds, from large scale research projects through designing programs that connect strategy to tactics. Rachel is particularly passionate about PROTOTYPING collaborative approaches to community engagement and connecting artists and makers to cultural organizations to explore big ideas together.

Risa Puno is a NYC-based interactive installation artist who takes play seriously. She is known for crafting DISARMINGLY PLAYFUL experiences that explore human connection, social dynamics, and shared interactions through site-specific public artworks, games, and participatory design.

TASSOS STEVENS is director and ceo of Coney, an arts and social change charity making all kinds of play to spark change. He is writing a Playbook, to which you can subscribe.

ZACH MORRIS is a director, choreographer, experience designer, and Co-Artistic Director of the internationally acclaimed Third Rail Projects. Zach's work includes theater, dance, site-specific performance, multimedia installation art/environments, and he is particularly interested in how all of these intersect with audience-centered experiential gatherings.

Board of Advisors

Brockett Horne

Eric Clough

Gabe Smedresman

Ida Benedetto

Jacob Marshall

James Genone

Jon Cropper

Matthew Purdon

Megan Livingston
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