Empathy is widely discussed today, particularly in a world where social polarization and global tensions are increasingly visible. Yet empathy is often approached as a cerebral concept rather than as a lived experience. What happens if we move beyond talking about empathy and instead create conditions to experience it together?
In this ESCalator session, Jeroen Peeters and Laura Niño invite participants to explore the Empathoscope, a large-scale experiential prototype designed by Future of Now with Gulhermei de Baera currently being further developed with the Societal Impact Design professorship. The Empathoscope is designed to stimulate embodied, sensory, and relational forms of empathy by allowing participants to engage with one another in new and unexpected ways.
During the session, participants will interact with the prototype and contribute reflections that help further enrich, test, and evolve the Empathoscope as a Systemic Co-Design instrument.
The ESCalator thus becomes both an experiential encounter and a collaborative inquiry into how design artefacts can support deeper social connection.
Together, we will explore how visceral, embodied experiences may help strengthen social cohesion and relational awareness in complex societal contexts.
Key learning questions
- How can the Empathoscope enable embodied and visceral forms of empathy, and how might such experiences contribute to systemic change?
- What emotional, bodily, and reflective responses does the Empathoscope evoke in participants?
Join us!
This ESCalator will be in English.