We believe in the power of collaboration in an age of individualism. We believe in creative problem solving in an age of solely analytical thinking. We believe in long-term value creation in an age of short-termism.
As a maturing organization, these words have been our creed and the source of motivation that fueled our work in 2021. This year, we focused deeper on designing and implementing community systems in all of our undertakings as well as inviting people to our communities who share this passion.
We envision a world where complex challenges are tackled through fluid and impactful collaboration of diverse individuals and spirit of community that will infuse in the experience.
Last year, our impact on our team, community, partners, clients, and the environment was put through a meticulous assessment by B Lab. Our governance methods were also scrutinized. It is as a result of this assessment that we are now proudly able to call ourselves a B Corp—but this is just the beginning of our journey.
So, what exactly does this mean for us? It means that we are going to be kept accountable for decisions that we make within ATÖLYE. It means we are going to make a commitment to face ourselves, identify how we can be better, and strive towards changing the way we work in a way that benefits both the people and the planet. We believe that this is no longer just a responsibility, but a necessity.
As we embrace this new journey, going forward, we’ll ask ourselves the following question at every intersection: We all leave our mark on the world, why not make it a beautiful one?
At the core, ATÖLYE is a group of individuals that share a common purpose—a team that has grown to over 70 people at the turn of the year.
In curating this team of very special individuals, we were guided by purpose of collectively fostering a uniquely creative organization that sets an example for the future of work and learning—one that becomes a beacon of inspiration for our members, clients, partners, and broader audiences.
All of these achievements are a collection of our team’s passion, dedication, and talent. We thank each and every one of our team members, as well as our close-knit community of creatives, for such an inspiring year.
In the past year, our Dubai hub enabled some exciting collaborations amongst members, hosted more than 1,700 attendees at events and shared endless cups of coffee in conversation.
Following our founding members program, we welcomed 40 new creatives to our community in project collaborations of various scopes and scales. A great many of our members collaborated both with ATÖLYE and other partners in the ATÖLYE network such as Dubai Future Foundation, Palmwood as well as kyu members like SYPartners.
- 2278 creatives in network
- 40 new members
- 21 ME nationalities represented
54% – Creative Industries
31% – Strategy & Business
6% – Social Sciences
8% – Tech & Engineering
- 25 members matched to projects
- 66 events orgnized
- 1790 people hosted
“Working with ATÖLYE felt like a homecoming more than anything else. The space and the team are
a manifestation of the power of community and magic of connections—through which meaningful interactions are not just possible but inevitable.”
Our community experimented with different modes of gathering in hybrid settings; with 69 community-only events organized by hub members and global event series such as CreativeMornings shifting between the virtual, physical, hybrid planes.
As it lies in the heart of our purpose, creating an environment for our members to take on collaboration opportunities was our primary goal in 2021. 22 of our members joined 41 projects in collaboration in the past year.
- 69 community events
- 41 project collaborations
39% – Creative Industries
28% – Strategy & Business
21% – Social Sciences
12% – Tech & Engineering
- 22 members matched to projects
- 18% members in project collaboration
“ATÖLYE’s diverse structure and the transdisciplinary nature of the community has inspired me and opened up space where I can reflect on my own innovation practice. Since I’ve met ATÖLYE, we have broadened each other’s horizons. It is a wonderful experience to collaborate with ATÖLYE at different scales.”
The programs explored inclusive leadership, learning design, sensemaking, holistic design, interpreting futures, and community design.
During these programs, participants experimented with leading-edge learning methods while tackling the real-life challenges they brought from diverse social and professional settings—building meaningful connections with fellow learners in their personal transformation journey.
The Learning Community also inspired 10 new microcommunities to emerge among which are inspiring initiatives such as the Legal Design Network and the University Innovation Fellows.
“I left every session with refreshed energy and realized how monotonous traditional learning experiences were compared to ATÖLYE Academy’s learning experiences. The community made me ponder questions such as ‘how do I best learn’ or ‘how do I best express what I have just learned’ and why is it important to learn within a cohort. I will carry these learnings with me for the rest of my life.”
- 600 enrolled learners
- 11 program cohorts
- 70% completion rate
54.2% – Creative Industries
31.3% – Strategy & Business
6.3% – Social Sciences
8.3% – Tech & Engineering
- 20 facilitators and expert trainers
- 10 microcommunities emerged
- 5.5/6 NPS score
“This community gave me a sense of togetherness during a time of isolation—I felt like I belonged here. The programs provided the courage to share the ideas that I’ve been holding back. I had the chance to collaborate with others on several occasions and met sensitive, innovative, and curious people who love to share. Joining the community might have been the best thing that’s ever happened to me in a long time.”
In 2021, the results of our collaboration with our partners and community toward long-term impact continued to be recognized in international competitions. Our body of multidisciplinary design work received numerous awards and recognitions across multiple industries, from Learning and Organization Design to Architectural Design.
The Pioneers of Change program we designed for the healthcare company Abdi İbrahim was selected as the “Best Program for Upskilling Employees” in the Brandon Hall Excellence Awards. In the program, 20 of Abdi İbrahim’s high-potential employees practiced human-centered design to develop solutions to the firm’s strategic challenges as well as training to become pioneers for new mentalities and ways of work in the company.
Our project on transforming the Sezin School’s space through spatial strategy and interior design has made it to the Official Selection at the London International Creative Competition in the “Professional/Build Architecture” category.
In the past year, in our strategy and design work, we focused heavily on deepening our interactions with our partners and fostering collaborations with our community members in impact-driven projects.
As a strategy, design, and transformation partner for a wide range of organizations, we further defined our set of offerings from a lens of end-to-end experience design and community development with an implementation-focused mindset.
Below you’ll find some highlights from our project work in 2021.
The UAE Pavilion, as the host country pavilion of the Expo, set out to tell the story of its people during this unique opportunity to welcome the world to their home and to share their hopes for the future.
Through a human-centric approach, ATÖLYE and SYPartners aimed to elevate a collective sense of ambition, foster a sense of connectedness, and encourage local and global stakeholders to connect and collaborate.
To celebrate Apple’s new store opening in Istanbul, Apple and ATÖLYE collaborated in designing the local chapter of “Today at Apple”; an ongoing global program by Apple aiming to inspire hands-on creativity in photography, art, design, coding, music, and other forms of artful expression.
The program’s main purposes, alongside re-energizing the existing market in Turkey, were defined as connecting with the local creative community and showcasing the full variety of what Apple products can achieve.
Committing to this purpose, we set out to build a community of creatives and curate a program inspired by the multicultural nature of the city of Istanbul. Our program strategy aimed to inspire creativity by elevating the participant experience by; building a diverse and open community, fostering participation and interaction, and supporting the exchange of values.
Perspektif İstanbul focused on exploring communities that share the goal of fostering creative fluidity, honoring the city, and embracing the use of technology for good. Through creative explorations, attended by hundreds of people in 13 sessions held by 19 artists, we found fresh and diverse perspectives towards the city we live in and the spaces we occupy; but, most importantly, towards one another.
With a playful look at the ever-changing and multi-disciplinary creative practices, the program praised the diversity and creativity of the city and called for new practices in technology and the positive social impact these practices can create.
As COVID started to disrupt education in unprecedented ways, ATÖLYE joined long-time transformation partner Sezin School in an effort to design the hybrid experience of K1 and Kindergarten students in 2021.
The project set out to design a supplementary experience to hybrid education for kindergarten and first-grade students, as well as their parents, to foster a sense of belonging to the notion of school.
“Working side-by-side with ATÖLYE’s designers and facilitators, we adopted new methods of collaboration, which have enabled all our stakeholders—students, teachers, parents, and more—to participate in the process of designing a better learning environment—organizationally, physically, and virtually.”
The project, titled Curiohood, focused on developing an open source learning kit for both refugee and host community children to activate their curiosity towards different cultures with 25 hands-on and
block-coding activities.
The project succeeded in embedding the toolkit that has been developed into two major NGOs’ social cohesion programs. Social impact organizations ASAM and MÜDEM, who have shown great interest in adopting Curiohood, are adamant in developing the program further with a “Train the Trainer” program.
- 54 children joined the program
- 25 social cohesion activities designed
The program, titled “dawn,” was a 16-week-long transformational journey where leaders focused on a real-world challenge to empower immigrant women through financial freedom.
The program brought together a diverse group of Responsible Leaders who share a common vision to collaborate in tackling a systemic issue. The program also aimed to develop a compelling definition and blueprint of Responsible Leadership and hopes to build an alternative to the mainstream ways of approaching leadership.
- 18 leaders in transformation
- 3 solution prototypes created
- 16 weeks of transformational journey
- 12 full days of immersion
In the past year, ATÖLYE Ventures was reenergized with the purpose of creating and distributing bigger and compounding value for the entire ATÖLYE ecosystem. In this year of exploration and experiments for ATÖLYE Ventures, figuring out how to achieve that purpose was key.
ATÖLYE Ventures has discovered new consultancy offerings with US-based partner Shared Studios, as well as acting as a startup acceleration partner for iftrue and Toyi.
Going forward, ATÖLYE Ventures will spin off into a separate entity, putting this years learnings into practice to achieve its purpose of learning and creating together with creatives and to help organizations accelerate their impact.
In another great collaboration, ATÖLYE joined the House of Beautiful Business at Concrete Love to host an interactive session; exploring the concepts of purpose and belonging in the context of communities. The session highlighted the rising importance and evolution of communities in our current decade and explored how to elevate them as a tool of collective resilience.
The climactic moment of the year, undoubtedly, was when ATÖLYE Dubai staged a pop-up space in Dubai Design Week, presenting an experiential program of talks and masterclasses, hosted by renowned local and international speakers.
Inspired by the belief that we are all creative by nature, each day of the pop-up titled “The Re:turn” represented a different stage of the cyclical creative process, moving from an inward exploration of the self to an outward mobilization of the collective — exploring the themes of circular economy, design thinking, architecture, community design, biomimicry, and many more.
August 2021 saw the worst wildfire season in Turkey’s history, with hundreds of square kilometers of forest burned near the country’s Mediterranean coast. Realizing the urgency of the situation, ATÖLYE organized a designathon in partnership with imece and teyit.org to design effective methods against wildfires in Turkey and support the ongoing fight.
The event convened an interdisciplinary community of local organizations and volunteers fighting against fire, creative industry professionals, designers, students, technologists, and civil society workers. Together, they discussed how to address the most urgent needs, prevent disinformation, and enable a coordinated relief effort.
In December, Saffron and ATÖLYE got together with a number of CEOs from Turkey to discuss their Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance (ESG) agendas.
At the roundtable, leaders from each organization shared their commitment to more sustainable business practices. An audio report sharing the event’s outcomes will be published soon in the spirit of collaboration and accountability; urging others to act for what really matters, today.
In curating this team of very special individuals, we were guided by purpose of collectively fostering a uniquely creative organization that sets an example for the future of work and learning—one that becomes a beacon of inspiration for our members, clients, partners, and broader audiences.
All of these achievements are a collection of our team’s passion, dedication, and talent. We thank each and every one of our team members, as well as our close-knit community of creatives, for such an inspiring year.
