This past year at Unstructured Studio has been less about big launches and more about steady, meaningful steps, showing up in learning communities, experimenting with creative tools, and deepening our practice around playful, accessible learning. As we pause and look back, here are a few moments that shaped our year.
Learning Through Community
We began the year by participating in Team4Tech’s coffee chat, a small but meaningful space for reflection and exchange. Conversations like these remind us why community matters, learning often happens in the in-between moments, through listening and shared experience.
Team4Tech
Later in the year, we also took part in Team4Tech’s annual fundraiser, supporting work aligned with our own values around equitable education and impact-driven collaboration.
We also reunited with the LLK (Lifelong Kindergarten) community, a space that continues to inspire our thinking around creativity, constructionism, and playful learning. Reconnecting with this community felt grounding, like coming home to shared language and values.
Designing and Experimenting with Creative Tools
A significant part of the year was spent designing and iterating on creative learning activities, particularly around tools we care deeply about.
We developed two hands-on activities using OctoStudio and OpenStreetMap, exploring how creative coding, storytelling, and mapping can come together in accessible, child-friendly ways. These activities reflect our ongoing interest in helping learners move between the digital and physical, the personal and the geographic.
Unstructured Studio
We also led a couple of workshops around OctoStudio for Amba, working closely with educators and facilitators to explore how creative coding can support expression, storytelling, and learner agency.
In collaboration with Jesse, we worked on localizing a language-learning board game, adapting it thoughtfully for context, language, and use. This process reinforced the importance of cultural relevance and co-design in educational tools.
We Speak!
Research, Reflection, and Sharing Our Work
This year also marked an important step in formalizing and sharing our learning through research.
We developed a research paper "Creativity Without Borders: An Impact Study of Unstructured Studio’s Low-Cost Tinkering Approach to Student Learning in Rural India" that was submitted to both IDC and CLC. While it wasn’t accepted at IDC, we’re proud to share that it was accepted at CLC, where we presented our work as a poster at UC Berkeley. The experience of articulating our practice through research, and engaging in dialogue around it, was both challenging and deeply affirming.
Home
We also had the opportunity to present at the Wisconsin Play Make Learn Conference, sharing our work with educators, designers, and researchers who care about playful, hands-on learning. These spaces continue to push us to reflect, refine, and communicate our ideas more clearly.
Recognition and Looking Ahead
One of the most encouraging moments of the year was being accepted into HundrED’s Global Collection. This recognition feels less like a destination and more like an invitation, to keep learning, questioning, and building alongside a global community of educators and innovators.
HundrED
Moving Forward
Looking back, this year was about participation over performance, process over polish, and learning in community. We’re grateful for the people, conversations, and opportunities that shaped our work and for the chance to keep experimenting with what playful, unstructured learning can look like.
As we move into the next year, we’re carrying forward the same curiosity: to design thoughtfully, collaborate generously, and continue making space for learning that is creative, grounded, and human.