How can interactive storytelling make complex societal issues engaging and accessible? In this hands-on session, Patrick Blenkarn & Milton Lim will guide you through their process of designing participatory narratives—then invite you to brainstorm and prototype your own.

Part masterclass, part game jam, this evening will explore how to blend humor, interactivity, and depth to create experiences that challenge and connect. Bring your ideas, collaborate with others, and leave with the tools to turn abstract themes into playful, meaningful stories.

Check out their game Asses.Masses, a live interactive performance that you can join during the Spring Festival (https://springutrecht.nl/en/programme/asses-masses/)

🎫 Regular 7,50/Student 5
https://ccu.stager.co/shop/default/events/111653430?utm_campaign=gameful-revolution&utm_source=tg

🐦 How do algorithms, birds, and other beings interact, communicate, and co-create?

During this meetup, you will be introduced to three projects that make creative use of ecological data to approach interspecies communication.

Céline Angonin will present Bioacoustic AI, which contributes to biodiversity research and conservation efforts by monitoring wildlife sounds.

Matteo Holyoke Marangoni will present Chorusing Symbionts: an investigation into interspecies music between humans, robots and animals through ecoacoustics and embodied interaction.

Niels Jansen will showcase the Vogelluisterstation: a sensor station that records, analyses and visualises bird sounds, making them accessible to both citizen scientists and professionals.

📅 22 May - 20:00-22:00
📍CCU Studio, Vlampijpstraat 84, Utrecht
🎫 Regular € 7,50 / Student € 5

Graphic: Chorusing Symbionts by Matteo Marangoni

Learn how to make complex societal issues playful and interactive with Patrick Blenkarn and Milton Lim, creators of the live game experience Asses.masses!

Patrick Blenkarn and Milton Lim are conceptual artists exploring urgent questions around the social value of art, digital labour, and the political potential of games. Mixing their backgrounds in performance, philosophy, psychology, and digital media, their collaborations have manifested in video games, participatory installations, digital archives, and card games.

In addition to asses.masses, Patrick and Milton are also the co-founders of the Canadian national video archive of performance (videocan) and the co-creators behind a performing arts economy trading card game (culturecapital).

📅 14 May, 20:00-22:00
📍CCU Studio, Vlampijpstraat 84, Utrecht
🎫 Regular €7,50/Student €5

https://ccu.stager.co/shop/default/events/111653430?utm_campaign=gameful-revolution&utm_source=tg

Whoops, we forgot a ticket link. Here it is: https://ccu.stager.co/shop/default/events/111653443?utm_campaign=meetup-more-than-human&utm_source=tg

Build your own bird detector! Learn step by step to build a fully customised animal sounds monitoring device, trained on a local dataset. This workshop is for bird nerds, sound wizards, and for those who are into DYI and low-tech solutions. New to all this? That’s great: coding experience is useful, but not required.

The workshop will be based on the bird detector developed by Matteo Holyoke Marangoni (@matteo_h_marangoni) for the project Chorusing Symbionts. He combines music with visual art, theatre, and new technologies. He develops robotic instruments and artificial creatures to compose spaces in which sound is experienced with the whole body and all the senses.

📅 June 13, 13:00-17:00
📍 CCU Studio, Vlampijpstraat 84, Utrecht
🎫 Regular €40/Student €20 - https://ccu.stager.co/shop/default/events/111659793?utm_campaign=build-a-bird&utm_source=tg

And if you'd like to get a preview of Matteo Marangoni's work, join us on Thursday evening 🦚🦉🦜

Join us for a meetup at Instituto Cervantes with our artists in residence!

Nahun Saldaña will develop a site-specific sonic intervention at the Hof van Cartesius using local bio-data and low-energy electronics to create a direct, sensory dialogue with the site's biodiversity

With a strong focus on science and spirituality, storytelling, bodily experience and audience participation, Sounak Das interrogates the metaphysical and speculative possibilities of art as a means of inquiry

Miranda Moss and Urs Gaudenz will unfurl their art-science practice of kitsch kitchen bioelectronics, to agitate knowledge hierarchies and shift collective imaginaries around science, technology and regenerative futures

What happens if we let go of the conceptual separation between nature and humans in a documentary? Werner de Valk tries to answer this question by filming a building, the Boomtoren, through the seasons, for one year

📅 10 July, 19:30 - 21:30
📌 Instituto Cervantes, Utrecht
🎫 Sign up: https://shorturl.at/Grxd9

Important notice: start time moved to 19:00!

CCU is looking for a medoir/senior UX/UI Designer to reinforce the team working on an internal product.

We are looking for someone who;

- has experience working at iteratively in production environments at platform/product level
- is comfortable adapting and expanding design systems in figma/penpot
- can work independently and communicate effectively in a small remote team
- has affinity for user research in informal settings
- can produce clear documentation
- Dutch speaking and being locally situated are not strict requirements, but ability to show up at the occasional in-person meeting or testing session in Utrecht is strongly preferred and your working times must be CET compatible

There is expected to be a relatively heavy workload for the first few weeks, settling into several months of iteration in parallel with development and user testing which will be part-time.

To apply please send a short bio with links to your CV and portfolio to cci@creativecodingutrecht.nl by the 31st of July. Attachments are ok, just please try to keep them under 10MB.

Feel free to forward this personally to others who may be interested but refrain from posting it publicly, as we would like to recruit from within the community.

One response so far, which is great, but we would like to further expand our rolodex! Please let the freelance UI/UX'er in your life know. Thank you!

Join us for an afternoon of claying, fermentation and shared stories! Get to know your neighbours from the Werkspoorkwartier and create meaning together. No experience needed—just bring your curiosity and a willingness to get your hands dirty.

In this hands-on workshop, we’ll shape fermentation jars from clay —vessels that will hold not just fermented goods, but also stories, recipes, and shared experiences. Led by artists Sunjoo Lee, we’ll cover our jars with whatever feels meaningful to us.

The clay jars will later become part of a community library at the Hof, where they can be filled with fermented and pickled goods and exchanged with others —allowing new stories, recipes and connections to emerge along the way.

This workshop is part of Planting Seeds for Biodiversity Futures, a collaboration between CCU and UTwente.

📅 18 September, 14:00-17:30
📍Boomtoren, Vlampijpstraat 84, Utrecht
🎫 Free - sign up here: https://ccu.stager.co/shop/default/events/111691934?utm_campaign=claying-futures&utm_source=tg