Maggi Asbjørnsen

Maggi (she/her) is a dancer, dance teacher, choreographer from Norway with a BA in dance and pedagogy. She also has an MA in fine arts where she focused on immersive performances that focused on the poetics of space and movements.

Mira Azarm

Mira (she/her) is an Innovation Instigator and Learning Experience Catalyst at the University of Maryland, where she teaches how to build at low resolution, collaborate radically, let go of being experts and lean on others, and most of all, talk to each other in meaningful ways. In addition to teaching, she designs artifacts to communicate concepts and tools; partners with groups across campus to design new classes, curriculum, and workshops; and prototypes new ways to weave innovation into the cultural thread of the institutions she works in.

Christopher Daniel

Chris (he/him) is an architect, experience designer and design strategist with a background in designing places for performance in real and virtual worlds. He organises Long Now London and teaches design at a couple of universities and feels self-conscious when writing about himself in the third person.

Abbygaelle Devriese

Abbygaelle (she/her) is a jack-of-all-trades who spent most of her adult life travelling and doing odd jobs here and there, a fascination for the theatrical and for emergent rituals has followed her throughout. She has spent the last year helping in the first steps of an intentional community and cognitive science research center near Lisbon, Portugal, where she has made her first steps in designing immersive theatre events.‍

Lina Edris

Lina (she/her) is a passionate driven designer, who stopped midway through a business career to pursue an inspiration, and turned it into a profession. Designing projects geared to facilitate inner transformation by evoking audience thoughts and feelings in experiential exhibitions, rides and immersive theatre.

Brian Rush

As an artist, Brian Rush (he/him) is mostly known for his “relational prosthetics,” objects that invite (usually awkward) encounters between two or more people. When he’s not working as a product designer in Portland, Oregon, these days he’s reimagining interpersonal engagement through pranks, hug rugs, cozy sci-fi, and experimental massage.

James Lopez

James Lopez (he/him) is a magician and minimalist immersive creator based in Denver, Colorado. James is the founder of The Exposure Project, an immersive theater company that explores minimalistic immersive experiences through magic, storytelling, technology, and sensorial experiences.

Anna Nalpantidis

Anna (she/her) is a creative producer, experience designer and artist based in Naarm (Melbourne), Australia. With a particular interest in site-responsive work. She has engaged audiences in chemical laboratory buildings, bathtubs in bookstores, community halls in regional towns, disused warehouses, libraries, theatres and galleries.

Amy Segreti

Amy Segreti (she/her) is a relational experience designer, writer and intimacy ceremonialist who focuses on connective, embodied, small-scale encounters. Through the weaving of guided itineraries, sensory exploration, skillful communication, and openness to the unknown, Amy helps people access new levels of intimacy and inner knowing. She comes from a background as a print journalist, group facilitator, and sex educator.

Casey Selden

Casey Selden (she/her) is a San Franciscan, an intentional community builder, and an unconventional educator who leverages unique environments to disrupt expectations and spark curiosity. She specializes in instigating social and emotional growth by shaping interpersonal dynamics and designing challenges that nurture self-confidence and compassion.

Alexander Todaro

Alex (he/him) is an experience designer, foodie, gardener, and all-in-all creative project lover who lives in the Hudson Valley. He has consulted on experience design projects with Google, Meow Wolf, and NASA. He also runs an annual creative residency in Italy called Residenza Lago Scuro, that focuses on regeneration, sustainability, and the magic that can happen when creative minds come together in a nourishing space.

Sarah Brown

Sarah (she/her) is an educator, community builder and learning experience designer based in the Netherlands. She designs and implements learning philosophy and pedagogy for K-12 international schools, and is currently studying for a doctorate in education policy and practice.

Kristen Witte

Kristen (they/them) is an experience designer who creates emotionally evocative, narrative-based experiences that connect and shift people’s perspectives of themselves and their world. Their work is deeply inspired by the concept of einfülung, the emotional knowing of a work of art from within, and they apply that ethos to inspire empathy and transformation in audiences.

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An Odyssey is a performance made for one person, lasting from a single day to four months and involving artists in many different disciplines. Research into the life of the one person—whom we call the participant—comprises our source material. The participant is not a passive viewer, but rather is the main character in the events that unfold during the performance.

MASTER CLASS

Create A
Life-Changing
Experience WITH US

Join a cohort of INTERNATIONAL cross-disciplinary artists for a dynamic and energetic week of learning, playing, and designing. Together, we will collaborate to create a ONCE-IN-A-LIFETIME Odyssey1 for a single chosen individual. The experience will immerse you in empathetic design, unique methodologies, and the power of intimate, transformative experiences.

The next master class will take place in 2026.
woman gazing at band of feathers and fauna wrapped on her arm

Fellows will join the Odyssey Works team for one week to learn our secrets from over TWO DECADES of designing experiences for one-person audiences. Together, we will collaborate to make a once-in-a-lifetime Odyssey for ONE chosen individual.

We will hit the ground running. We will present concepts of empathetic design, teach methods for making diagrams, and practice creating spaces of intimacy and CURIOSITY. Each fellow will be selected for their particular expertise, and we will work across disciplines to create a transformative experience that is site specific. Days will be spent researching our chosen participant, collaborating in the development of particular MOMENTS for them, and learning the Odyssey Works approach to experience design. Each fellow will return home seeing their personal, professional, and creative lives through a new lens.

DESIGN FOR TRANSFORMATION

BECOME A FELLOW

Master Class Fellows spend the week deeply immersed in creative research, design, and production. We will be in a remarkable place, and the project we complete together will be demanding. We will live, eat, and work together full-time for the week.

APPLICATIONS OPEN

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Best known for creating Odysseys - enormous, personalized performances designed to guide individuals through PROFOUND journeys - we have spent decades researching the practicalities of experience design across disciplines.

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A SHORT HEADLINE

Since 2001, Odyssey Works has been pioneering the practices of transformative experience design. We have spent decades researching the practicalities of experience design across disciplines.

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Immerse yourself in our transformative Odysseys: unique, personalized experiences designed to guide individuals through profound journeys.

Application deadline October 1st, 2024

PREVIOUS

MASTER CLASSES & THEIR ODYSSEYS

Each master class culminates in a unique "Odyssey"—a deeply personal, immersive experience designed for one person. These events range from a single day to several months, involving artists like actors, musicians, and even dream analysts. Our past Odysseys have left lasting impressions on participants, proving the transformative power of this unique form of art.

2024
France

There Are Mountains Beneath Us

When she applied to receive an Odyssey, Tiu de Haan had already lived many lives. While currently, she was a ritual designer and creative coach, Tiu had been dreaming of establishing a residency for experiential-focused works. She embodied the essence of “pronoia”–the sense that the universe was conspiring to do good things for her–and even though she didn’t have a romantic or business partner, living parents or children, she was surrounded by incredibly rich friendships.
MEET THE MASTER CLASS FELLOWS
Maggi Asbjørnsen

Maggi (she/her) is a dancer, dance teacher, choreographer from Norway with a BA in dance and pedagogy. She also has an MA in fine arts where she focused on immersive performances that focused on the poetics of space and movements.

Mira Azarm

Mira (she/her) is an Innovation Instigator and Learning Experience Catalyst at the University of Maryland, where she teaches how to build at low resolution, collaborate radically, let go of being experts and lean on others, and most of all, talk to each other in meaningful ways. In addition to teaching, she designs artifacts to communicate concepts and tools; partners with groups across campus to design new classes, curriculum, and workshops; and prototypes new ways to weave innovation into the cultural thread of the institutions she works in.

Christopher Daniel

Chris (he/him) is an architect, experience designer and design strategist with a background in designing places for performance in real and virtual worlds. He organises Long Now London and teaches design at a couple of universities and feels self-conscious when writing about himself in the third person.

Abbygaelle Devriese

Abbygaelle (she/her) is a jack-of-all-trades who spent most of her adult life travelling and doing odd jobs here and there, a fascination for the theatrical and for emergent rituals has followed her throughout. She has spent the last year helping in the first steps of an intentional community and cognitive science research center near Lisbon, Portugal, where she has made her first steps in designing immersive theatre events.‍

Lina Edris

Lina (she/her) is a passionate driven designer, who stopped midway through a business career to pursue an inspiration, and turned it into a profession. Designing projects geared to facilitate inner transformation by evoking audience thoughts and feelings in experiential exhibitions, rides and immersive theatre.

2022
Portugal

The Road to Taz

Jude’s Odyssey was delayed, as so many things were, by the Coronavirus Pandemic. He had filled out our questionnaire in 2019, hoping for an Odyssey in 2020. Two years later, after changing his name and his pronouns, and reexamining his way of life, Jude filled out a second questionnaire. This new questionnaire spoke to a wish to find a new way of making community and a love of the mysterious lives people live in underground spaces. When he left ridden New York to meet us in Lisbon, it was this interest in the alternative worlds one must seek by traveling to underlands, to unmapped places, to hidden communities, that would drive the development of the Odyssey.
MEET THE MASTER CLASS FELLOWS
Maggi Asbjørnsen

Maggi (she/her) is a dancer, dance teacher, choreographer from Norway with a BA in dance and pedagogy. She also has an MA in fine arts where she focused on immersive performances that focused on the poetics of space and movements.

Mira Azarm

Mira (she/her) is an Innovation Instigator and Learning Experience Catalyst at the University of Maryland, where she teaches how to build at low resolution, collaborate radically, let go of being experts and lean on others, and most of all, talk to each other in meaningful ways. In addition to teaching, she designs artifacts to communicate concepts and tools; partners with groups across campus to design new classes, curriculum, and workshops; and prototypes new ways to weave innovation into the cultural thread of the institutions she works in.

Christopher Daniel

Chris (he/him) is an architect, experience designer and design strategist with a background in designing places for performance in real and virtual worlds. He organises Long Now London and teaches design at a couple of universities and feels self-conscious when writing about himself in the third person.

Abbygaelle Devriese

Abbygaelle (she/her) is a jack-of-all-trades who spent most of her adult life travelling and doing odd jobs here and there, a fascination for the theatrical and for emergent rituals has followed her throughout. She has spent the last year helping in the first steps of an intentional community and cognitive science research center near Lisbon, Portugal, where she has made her first steps in designing immersive theatre events.‍

Lina Edris

Lina (she/her) is a passionate driven designer, who stopped midway through a business career to pursue an inspiration, and turned it into a profession. Designing projects geared to facilitate inner transformation by evoking audience thoughts and feelings in experiential exhibitions, rides and immersive theatre.