sparks (they/them) is the co-founder of SPLITWEATHER, an experiential outdoor adventure series that blends wonder, athleticism and immersive storytelling to engage folks in climate activism.
They are a 2024 graduate of Odyssey Works’ Experience Design Certificate Program and a founding fellow of Landfall Labs, an experiential research lab of designers and changemakers exploring how experience design can go beyond personal transformation and create actual systemic change.
sparks is fascinated by wonder and how it can be a catalyst for behavioral change. They’ve interviewed a wide range of experts, from performance artists to neuroscientists, therapists to theater directors, all in their pursuit to understand how designing with wonder might potentiate systemic change. (Curious? Ask them for a sneak peek of their findings to date!)
A hopeful rebel at heart, sparks gets fired up about worldbuilding that provokes new perspectives, elicits behavioral shifts and imagines better futures.
And when they aren’t waist deep in a color-blocked Miro or down a new research rabbit hole, find them at the circus! sparks is the founder of Portland’s Queer Underground Rebel Circus (QURC), a nonconforming troupe that uses circus as a medium for playful subversion and local activism.
ABOUT SPLITWEATHER:
We design adventures inspired by biomimicry–real examples of resilience, adaptation, and efficiency in nature. We nerd out about how ants optimize paths, how trees communicate and how mycelium networks share resources. And then we design experiential challenges for humans inspired by them. We believe there is an opportunity gap in the future of sports and experiential and we are passionate about creating experiences that combine physical endurance with biomimicry-inspired narrative and collective problem solving to empower folks to take a more engaged role in environmental activism.
