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Designing Safe Spaces: Mindful Pop-Up Book Making with Jeff Kasper
by
Fri, Apr 17, 2026
10 AM – 3 PM EDT (GMT-4)
Private Location (sign in to display)
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Note: There is a limit at 1 ticket per person for this event.
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Details
Inspired by Don’t Mind if I Do at the Smith College Art Museum, this workshop invites you to imagine and design spaces for rest through drawing, tactile materials, and pop-up book construction. Together, we will explore how artists and designers reimagine shared environments to support care, access, and collective belonging.
The day begins in the museum with guided looking and quiet sketching. From there, we move into a contemplative design studio at the DTI, where we will create a four-part, three-dimensional pop-up book—an unfolding sequence of connected spaces for rest.
Through guided visualization, journaling, and hands-on construction, you will design four imagined spaces that might form a house, a museum, a community center, or an entirely new environment. Using cardstock templates, foam, fabric, felt, textured papers, stamps, and layered collage materials, each of us will build a tactile, dimensional “dream space” that can be reopened and revisited whenever a mindful moment is needed.
No prior art or design experience is required. This workshop is a guided 5-hour experience at a pace that supports reflection, experimentation, and gentle conversation. Registration includes lunch, snacks, and materials. Please plan to attend the full session.
Participants will leave with:
A handcrafted pop-up book
New approaches to mindful design and making as a contemplative practice
Practical tools for imagining supportive environments for imagination, accessibility, and care
Lunch is provided. All materials are included.
Space is limited. Sign up with a Friend.
Food Provided (Lunch will be provided )
Speakers
Jeff Kasper
Jeff Kasper is a Northampton, Massachusetts based artist and educator. His public art, participatory learning, and making experiences bring together design thinking, mindfulness, storytelling, dialogue, and community building. Kasper’s projects explore how people navigate social support, proximity, and care in everyday life. He is interested in how design can make tangible the often-unspoken negotiations people engage in around distance, connection, trust, vulnerability, and safety. His recent projects have been presented with New York City Department of Parks & Recreation, Meta Open Arts, Queens Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland, Tufts University Art Galleries, The Fralin Museum of Art, and the John Michael Kohler Arts Center. Kasper is a featured artist in Don’t Mind if I Do at Smith College Museum of Art. He is Associate Professor of Art at UMass Amherst and a trauma-informed teaching artist certified with the Bartol Foundation.