CASE STUDIES
EXAMPLES OF PROJECTS, CLIENTS AND MOMENTS OF MEANING
I curate and create experiences designed to shift your perspective to see the wonder in the world, helping people to birth their creative ideas and design their own unique path filled with moments of meaning.
But, you may well ask, what does that actually MEAN?
And what does being a ritual designer, a creative facilitator and idea doula really entail?
There is no simple answer to the question as every single case and client receives a unique, personalised creative process.
But there’s nothing like a story or two to give you a sense of what the reality can look like.
Below, you’ll find a selection of case studies to give you some idea of what it is I do.
And there are many more stories I can share. Feel free to get in touch if you would like to find out more.
Trusted By
A pre-dawn ritual for a thousand change-makers at the Global Hearth Summit
As the sun began to rise on the summer solstice 2025, I led a silent candle-lit ritual procession by the riverbanks in Ljubljana, Slovenia, for the extraordinary attendees of the Global Hearth Summit, a week long gathering for a thousand international change-makers.
My design was informed by a local Slovenian myth, namely that in the hours before the dawn on the solstice, with a seed in your pocket, you might just be able to activate the superpower of being able to understand and communicate with the more than human world of animals and birds, and feel the power of plants, trees and rivers.
We gathered in darkness and silence at 4am with our “seeds” and the birdsong filled the air - sound on here - as each person lit their candle from one another’s flames, before heading along the river to the collective hearths where we could share our individual intentions and reignite our collective hope.
I am on the Arts and Experience Board of the Global Hearth Summit, part of the non-profit organisation, the Well-being Project, which focuses on catalyzing a culture where change-makers are well and their work is thriving, through individual, collective, and ecological wellbeing. To be in service to this community of global change makers of every imaginable kind has been life changing, and my ritual design was about shining our individual, collective and ultimately universal light.
The next Hearth summit is taking place in Asia in 2028 and I have recently returned from a trip with my fellow Arts and Experience Board members to begin the experience design process for the next global gathering.
Grief Game Design Ritual
I was commissioned to design two IRL rituals and a day long workshop for the wonderful community behind Apart of Me, a multi-award-winning therapeutic game, co-created by experts in child psychology and bereaved young people, that translates bereavement-counselling techniques into a magical 3D digital world.
It is a game designed to deal with grief necessarily means that everyone involved in its making knows the pain of loss, including the children and young people whose feedback and needs are incorporated into the design at every stage.
At a design and development day which focussed on one of the most sensitive areas of the world of the game, I was invited to offer a grief ritual to everyone present, games designers, charity founders and children alike, allowing for the dead loved ones whose absence was so keenly felt to be honoured, named and thanks for their part in the day.
The first ritual I held for the community included many bereaved children, so the design had to be both playful and allow for shyness, incorporating the creation of an altar of photos, mementoes and a rose for each dead loved one, whispering their names in chorus so everyone was able to participate without feeling exposed. I was then invited back to create a ritual for a fundraising event with a moment of candle-lit connection and eye contact, again saying the name of a loved one whose death had moved the person to contribute to aid in the grief of others, to acknowledge the people we have lost. I also designed a day for the two co-founders to help them connect with the essence of the project and bring their own wisdom, wonder and creativity to the centre of the mission, the vision and the plan.
The Path - 1 year, 6 women
The Path is my year long immersive programme, bringing together all aspects of my curation, mentoring, creative facilitation and experience design for a hand-picked cohort of 6 participants, most recently women only.
I first piloted it in 2018-9 and it spans a series of 7 day long experiential adventures in person, as well as a full weekend together on retreat in a beautiful venue in the English countryside, taking them through their very own bespoke transformational process over 12 hours of one to one time to support them throughout.
Over the course of the year, they experienced a variety of creative immersions, including a session making their very own miniature diorama with artist Lisa Swerling and learning how to find magic portals into other worlds at will... They also mastered the art of Ritual Design, with each of the women supporting each other in creating their own rituals for a variety of shifts and thresholds, and in between in person sessions, we met not in zoom but as light beings in VR (see the MIT article below for a flavour) - for everything about this year was based in wonder.
The Path balanced profound and playful group experiences with individual one to one journeys for each participant,
Here’s what one participant had to say:
“I am so incredibly grateful for the journey I’ve had on the Path.
This space for me was a grief circle, a creativity masterclass, a mystical unlocking, a way to greater connection with myself and others, and adventure (an incredible adventure) and a place where I have experienced the wealth of female presence and permission.
Through this work, I have found new ways of being that have cascaded into my life in such vibrant and delicate ways that I can only keep going forward with these opportunities and these women.
Gratitude really isn’t a big enough word.”
Teaching Ritual Design -
Guest Faculty with Odyssey Works
In 2025, I was invited to be on the faculty of the Odyssey Works Experience Design Certificate Program, teaching an international cohort of 30 students over the course of the ten months, both in person at international residential retreats and online.
The Masters style training is the only one of its kind in the field of experience design, and having collaborated with Odyssey Works since 2012, when I worked on a 36 hour “waking dream for an audience of one” as described by the New York Times, it was a delight to be there in support of the founder, my friend and course leader, Abe Burickson, offering my human-centred, wonder-tending ritual expertise by way of complement to his brilliance in distilling the intellectual and structural art of experience design.
Teaching Ritual Design -
Professor at the College of Extraordinary Experiences
I was also invited to be Professor at the 2023 College of Extraordinary Experiences in a 13th century Polish castle.
The College is a little like spending a week in Hogwarts, where the students are all experience designers in some form or another, from immersive theatre creators and brand ambassadors to haunted house designers and bonafide witches.
I chose to offer a session where everyone designed their own funeral, sharing the tools I have developed over years of working with death, bereavement and the funeral industry to provide everyone at the college with the opportunity to turn their attention and skillsets to the one and only universal ritual.
Rituals for Creativity: One to One Coaching
I worked one to one with Hannah Murray whose extraordinary memoir was published to critical acclaim in 2026, supporting her as she navigated her creative process.
“Tiu is so wonderful on the subject of creativity. Her approach feels holistic, deeply thoughtful, and all-encompassing.
She has helped take my work in such fun and surprising directions and has helped me to feel grounded and fully supported while doing so.
If you have a creative project you want to bring into this world, I cannot think of anyone better to guide and assist you. “
Hannah Murray, film and TV actor and author of ‘The Make-Believe - A Memoir of Magic and Madness’.
I also worked with Louise Winter, one of the authors of the book ‘We All Know How This Ends’, to support the writing process in the two months leading up to the publisher’s deadline.
“Sessions with Tiu helped me to find some clarity when I couldn't see the wood for the trees. Together we created a series of rituals which put me in the right headspace to write the book.
Having time on Tiu's boat every week gave me the space I needed to work out what I needed and how I could give it to myself.
Tiu helped me to let go of things which were blocking my creativity.”
Louise Winter, Funeral Director and Founder at Poetic Endings and Author
“I describe Tiu de Haan as the ‘Marina Abramovic’ of coaching.
That’s shorthand for saying Tiu brings an unusual creative, artistic, shape-shifting, shamanic genius to her coaching.”
“Isness” - Ritual and Experience Design in VR
I worked on - and in fact named - this incredible VR project, Isness - which was written about in the MIT Technology Review in August 2022. The subheading reads:
“On key metrics, a VR experience elicited a response indistinguishable from subjects who took medium doses of LSD or magic mushrooms.”
It takes you into a transformational state that rivals psychedelics for its capacity to trigger a mystical experience, yet is entirely drug free.
My contribution was to design a ritual to open and close the experience, write and record the voiceover narrating the guided instructions and to co-create the flow of the scenes, including all audio-visual, physical and imaginative components.
The project was written up into a scientific paper in which I am cited as a co-author, with the astonishing title “Isness: Using Multi-Person VR to Design Peak Mystical-Type Experiences Comparable to Psychedelics.”
Hair, Ritual and Neuroscience: a special event for the Rubin Museum, New York City
I collaborated with world renowned neuroscientist Beau Lotto and his Lab of Misfits to design, record and deliver a special ritual working with ideas of creativity, resilience and - hair.
At a ticketed event in New York’s Rubin Museum, we took the audience through an intimate exploration of meaning making and how our hair can be an unexpected way into connection, creativity and a shift in perception.
The event included the participation of the audience in a shared ritual, where each person had their head held and their hair stroked and brushed by their neighbour, with a guided meditation led by me that took them through an inner journey designed in collaboration with Beau Lotto.
Experience Design for Joy: The Pronoia Project
I developed a 2-hour workshop to take place in an urban setting, committing random acts of kindness and covert beauty, where participants learn how to interact with the city as a source of connection, playfulness, sensory delight and creative possibilities.
We explore the idea of seeing our world and our challenges through the lens of “pronoia” where everything can be interpreted as a blessing in disguise, and then go out on the streets to engage in joyful acts of beautiful intervention, learning practical, playful tools to transform our world through the deliberate spreading of joy and delight.
I have run this workshop with a variety of groups, from city planning students to quantum physicists to creative entrepreneurs.
“ Having been through the range of similar workshops in the Silicon Valley tech world, Tiu’s approach is better than any of them.
It was mischievous and thought-provoking. ”
Godfather Ritual for Bereaved Toddler
When a young father died suddenly and unexpectedly, leaving behind his partner and their 2 year old son, the mother asked me to help her create a Father’s Day ceremony to welcome 7 godfathers into her son’s life.
We co-created a playful but nonetheless emotional ritual, to celebrate the positive male role models in her son’s life and to invite them to be there for him as he grows up.
“I asked Tiu if she would create a godfathering ceremony for my son shortly after his father died. She listened carefully to all my half-formed ideas and with a very gentle ear – and helped to bring them into reality, enhancing them with her own magical touches.
Everyone who attended was surprised and moved at what a sensitive, memorable and fun event it was. And my son loved it most of all, which was a beautiful thing at a challenging time in our lives.”
Ritual Design - the Self Marriage of Grace Gelder
In 2014, I was asked to design a self marriage ceremony for artist and photographer, Grace Gelder.
After giving a talk about ritual design at a festival that summer, where I mentioned the experience of creating a self-marriage, a journalist approached me to ask if he could write about the story and when Grace agreed, it was published in the Guardian.
Within 24 hours, it had gone viral.
The story of her self marriage became a global phenomenon, creating headlines in national newspapers and tabloids the world over. Grace was invited to talk shows in the USA and featured on many radio and TV shows in the UK and abroad, and when the noise died down, it transpired that the ritual she had commissioned me to create went on to inspire many others to marry themselves in turn.
PAST PROJECT
Eyeshine
In 2005, I founded a successful not-for-profit to connect parents and children through playing in nature, which was granted £238k in BIG Lottery funding, and went on to run residential workshops for hundreds of families.
From the first pilot residential weekend in a treehouse village in a forest, through to the final grant report, filled with testimonials from many hundreds of families, the project was a living - and successful - experiment in the possibility of wonder.
Time and again, the team witnessed increased levels of confidence, playfulness, closeness and connection within the families who attended the weekends and in many cases saw visible transformations in participants of all ages who quite literally left with their eyes shining, experiencing renewed levels of joy, inspiration and imagination.
In terms of how this was achieved, Eyeshine was also a living experiment in how to create a project, realise a vision, manage a team and run a company with creativity and excellence as well as compassion and deep connection.
At the end of the grant, the funders stated that Eyeshine was 'exceptional'.
