PMQ Seed 2025 Creative Summer Festival – The Creative Power Plant

How could children become the creative core—empowered to inspire over 3,000 public participants to experience the deep connection between the senses and creativity? During the festival, PMQ was reimagined as “The Creative Power Plant,” a lively hub where children shared, tested, and celebrated their own creations.

The curatorial concept likened sensory experience to a switch that activates inspiration, while the brain was envisioned as a factory of creativity. To embody this idea, we designed a ten-hour design-thinking learning experience, working with five local creative education teams to guide over 300 primary school students through a series of workshops. Through the seven senses—sight, hearing, touch, taste, smell, vestibular, and proprioception—students engaged in experiential learning and applied their discoveries to their own creations. As “Inspiration Engineers,” children connected their sensory experiences with the public’s imagination, crafting unique interactive installations that became the content of the exhibition. This child-led curatorial model directly reflects Aaam’s mission to empower communities through design.

The exhibition space evoked the atmosphere of a factory, featuring metal chimneys, wire-mesh partitions, and a symbolic “Brain Capsule Machine.” Over nine days, 54 interactive “Inspiration Stations” were showcased, each created and hosted by children acting as Inspiration Engineers. The Brain Capsule Machine offered six collectible “Sensory Hero” capsule keychains designed by the students, symbolizing shared creativity between the young creators and the public. These tangible tokens transformed abstract sensory experiences into playful characters and superpowers. The space blurred the boundaries between education, exhibition, and architecture, transforming PMQ into a vibrant platform for collective creativity and community energy.

Throughout the nine-day Seed Festival, children not only exhibited their works but also interacted with the public as designers and facilitators. This two-way exchange taught them to translate ideas into actions that could influence others, while audiences rediscovered the power of the senses through the eyes of young creators—witnessing the courage and experimentation that drive innovation. For AaaM, “The Creative Power Plant” was more than an exhibition—it was a living experiment in design-thinking empowerment, showing how architects can inspire the next generation to turn imagination into action and co-create a more creative future together.