Katja Mock
Child Culture Designer & Illustrator
Katja is an explorer and creator of spaces, tools and graphics, who deep dives into each project with openness and curiosity.
Katja’s design ethos is about making the invisible visible, giving a voice to the voiceless, and creating entry points to otherwise closed spaces. Her favorite projects circle around creating for children and including child perspectives. With a background that spans roles as diverse as designer, teacher, art mediator, and garden facilitator, her toolkit is a colorful array of skills—ranging from co-creation and play to illustration, graphic design, spatial design, and crafts.
Project
PICK NIC
A mobile foraging station to explore urban plants with children
-What is this?
-It's a PICK NIC!
L, 10 years.
But not a conventional picnic. It pops up in Gothenburg's parks, playgrounds and schoolyards
and invites to an exploration of the plants around. Can plants be food even in the city? What can
you craft out of them, how can you use them for play?
It is a blog combined with a mobile foraging station, which provides the tools to cook, craft and
experiment with the plants on site. In this way some aspects of the role that plants play for
humans can be experienced by children, but also surrounding adults, in their own environment.
New stories about how people and plants interact in Gothenburg emerge.
-It's a PICK NIC!
L, 10 years.
But not a conventional picnic. It pops up in Gothenburg's parks, playgrounds and schoolyards
and invites to an exploration of the plants around. Can plants be food even in the city? What can
you craft out of them, how can you use them for play?
It is a blog combined with a mobile foraging station, which provides the tools to cook, craft and
experiment with the plants on site. In this way some aspects of the role that plants play for
humans can be experienced by children, but also surrounding adults, in their own environment.
New stories about how people and plants interact in Gothenburg emerge.
Project
City Farm Augarten
An urban garden for Vienna’s inhabitants
City Farm Augarten is a green oasis in the middle of Vienna, Austria. There the city inhabitants
can explore and experience the garden's ecosystem with all of its plants, insects and
microorganisms. Katja collaborated with the City Farm for a year to work on a visual language,
didactic material, the spatial design of the garden itself, having workshops with children, taking
pictures, help with the marketing and also get her hands dirty with garden work.
can explore and experience the garden's ecosystem with all of its plants, insects and
microorganisms. Katja collaborated with the City Farm for a year to work on a visual language,
didactic material, the spatial design of the garden itself, having workshops with children, taking
pictures, help with the marketing and also get her hands dirty with garden work.
Project
MUSEION – Family Tour
An entry point to contemporary art for kids and their adults
An ongoing collaboration with the mediation team at MUSEION, Museum of Modern and
Contemporary Art in Bolzano-Bozen to create a Family Tour for their exhibitions. It started 2020
when MUSEION had to reimagine its Family Tour in response to the challenges posed by the
COVID-19 pandemic. A bag with tools, usually returned after exploring the exhibition, was no
longer working. An engaging activity sheet was introduced. Each young visitor received a copy
in English, German, or Italian to delve into the current exhibition. This form of Family Tour was
used between 2020 and 2022, where the bag with tools could be reintroduced. Since then
the collaboration continued by creating a postcard with illustrations and ideas how to interact
with the exhibition.
Contemporary Art in Bolzano-Bozen to create a Family Tour for their exhibitions. It started 2020
when MUSEION had to reimagine its Family Tour in response to the challenges posed by the
COVID-19 pandemic. A bag with tools, usually returned after exploring the exhibition, was no
longer working. An engaging activity sheet was introduced. Each young visitor received a copy
in English, German, or Italian to delve into the current exhibition. This form of Family Tour was
used between 2020 and 2022, where the bag with tools could be reintroduced. Since then
the collaboration continued by creating a postcard with illustrations and ideas how to interact
with the exhibition.
See more of Katja's work at katjamock.com
