Mathijs Stegink

Category: Current / ongoing / present

  • Be your own dog — Visual thinking workshop

    Be your own dog — Visual thinking workshop

    This workshop is a playful, multi‑year experiment that I am doing with many groups of people. Participants draw dogs from memory, observation, and imagination to discover and learn about how our minds store and compress visual ideas. By doing experiments and comparing them we explore drawing as a language and a tool for creative thinking. Continuously uncovering our hidden patterns.

    No drawing skill is needed for this workshop 🙂, this is about exploration, not perfection. It shows how creativity emerges when habitual patterns are broken and imagination takes the lead, connecting object, eye, hand, and mind in a direct, embodied way.

    For artists, students, educators, and curious minds who want to rethink representation, push creative boundaries, and play with visual thinking.


    You can book this as a fun and interactive starter for your creative team meetings! And in the process you help me gather more dog-drawings that I will finally use in an exhibition! The workshop works well as an interactive presentation of about 45 minutes.

    contact me if you are interested! mathijs@cardboarders.com

  • Educator at WDKA and other art education institutes

    Educator at WDKA and other art education institutes

    Willem de Kooning Academy (BA), Rotterdam – since 2015 – teacher and curriculum developer in the departments of Animation, Illustration, Audio Visual Design, and Social Practice, focusing on participatory projects, storytelling, co-creation, and reflective design.

    Previously, I worked at the Hogeschool voor de Kunsten Utrecht (departments Animation & Illustration) teaching experimental stop-motion, material exploration, with non-human storytelling as the core. I also have several years of experience in MBO Media and Design Schools and various Media Labs (2002-2015).

    Making an Encyclopedia about Kralingen Oost with the illustration students: 2024. Binding phase 🙂 Photo by Kim Hospers

  • Cardboarders: Massive Collaborative Cardboard Arenas

    Cardboarders: Massive Collaborative Cardboard Arenas

    Cardboarders is a participatory cardboard art collective that is working from Amsterdam. I was initiator and am now artistic lead and facilitator. We love to create large-scale, crowd-constructed cardboard arena’s where visitors collectively build characters, props, challenges, environments, games and battles.

    Selection of materialisations: Defqon.1, Lowlands, Wildeburg, Playgrounds Festival, Smeerboel, Hemeltjelief, Awakenings, Milkshake, Kopfestival, Discovery Festival, Night of the Nerds, Dutch Game Week.


    We also facilitate workshops.

  • Teambuilding events (cardboarders / animation)

    Teambuilding events (cardboarders / animation)

    Custom teambuilding sessions for Tony’s Chocolonely, Oxfam, Raets, Ziggo, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Beeld en Geluid, Atlassian, Lipton, Jaarbeurs Utrecht, and many others.

  • Creative programmer / curator – Kaboom! & KLIK!

    Creative programmer / curator – Kaboom! & KLIK!

    For KLIK! and now Kaboom Animation Festival I developed many programs, workshops, decoration and opening performances. It has always been a playground for me to work there, most of the time with my collegue Michael Veerman, plus  I got to go on the KLIK Russia Tour (Nizny Novgorad, Moscow, Novosibirsk) and United States West Coast Tour (LA, SF, Portland). Interactive animation screenings I made for Kaboom were regular editions of Midnight Madness (with Tunde Vollenbroek, Luuk van Heut and Lucas Schaeffer),  Ultraviolent Animation, a Ren and Stimpy marathon, Midlife Mindfulness etc. 

  • Bamboebios

    Bamboebios

    Artistic lead of the Bamboebios: a festival cinema and interactive playground at Wildeburg (2022–ongoing). Featuring improvised talk shows, trip-guided drawing, clowns, camera toys, performances, and endless short films and animation.