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17-25 October 2026

Navigating Stress

Making stress and mental health discussable through design, play and dialogue.

Hosted by Navigating Stress

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Entrance fee

Free access

Event type

Exhibition

Accessibility

Toilets available
Partially wheelchair accessible
Wheelchair friendly toilet available

Opening hours

11:00
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18:00
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Navigating Stress is an Eindhoven based social enterprise making stress and mental health discussable through design, play and dialogue. Our method breaks taboos, builds knowledge, and leads to more understanding, more resilience, and more happiness.

Navigating Stress

Common Ground
Stress and mental health are part of everyone's life. Yet talking about them is often difficult. Navigating Stress is a design driven method that makes these conversations accessible through play.

The Landscape
At its core is a physical serious game in which participants build their own stress landscape using tangible objects and metaphors. They explore the Lake of Expectations, the City of Never Ending Tasks, the Mountain of Perfectionism, and the Clock of Valuable Time. By making stress visible and tangible, people find words for experiences that are often difficult to express. They search for routes to another state of mind.

The Method
The game is only the starting point. Around it sits a complete method: trained facilitators, structured sessions, and programmes tailored to every organisation and context.

At DDW
At DDW 2026, visitors discover the full range of possibilities. How the method works, how it can be deployed, and what a collaboration with Navigating Stress could look like for their organisation, team, or context.

Lasting Impact
The conversation stays, even after we leave. The toolkit opens the conversation. The method makes it last.

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Participants of this exhibition

About Navigating Stress

We were born at DDW. In 2021, a graduation project at Design Academy Eindhoven received the DDW Design Award for its societal impact. That was not just a moment. It was a starting point. Navigating Stress is a social enterprise based in Eindhoven, making stress and mental health discussable across sectors, scales, and borders. Not as a clinical challenge. As a human one. Succesfully helped over 1.000+ people. Driven by curiosity. Grounded in design. Built for people.

Colofon

Owner Geert Kruijswijk
Social Designer Mirte van der Nat

Partners

Sponsored by Navigating Stress