Our story
Live was good. We had fulfilling jobs. Time and resources to escape the dark Dutch winters, camp in Iceland, walk the Chinese wall. Precious friends, fun dinners, inspiring conversations. Bike rides, hikes in the woods.
But something was nagging in the background.
We started to notice:
Finding a place to live somehow equaled a financial investment project. While our grandparents still had veggie gardens, now being able to buy 'real' food seemed a privilege. Through our parent's health issues we met a system eager to 'fix' and 'repair' but much less to provide real, human care. Even though we found an amazing school for our daughter, following innate curiosity seemed to give way to grades. Social media platforms allowed us to meet the most amazing people but also left us empty and exhausted, every single time. While we found meaning in our work, the companies we worked with were ultimately set up to gather up resources and provide wealth for an incredibly small group of people.
Now what?
Uncivilize is our attempt to find our own role in these times of change -and offer whatever we have to share. To take the nagging feeling and turn it into action. To better understand how we got here. To explore what change can look like. And to experiment with (even the tiniest) steps towards a future in which we center life itself.
Live was good. We had fulfilling jobs. Time and resources to escape the dark Dutch winters, camp in Iceland, walk the Chinese wall. Precious friends, fun dinners, inspiring conversations. Bike rides, hikes in the woods.
But something was nagging in the background.
We started to notice:
Finding a place to live somehow equaled a financial investment project. While our grandparents still had veggie gardens, now being able to buy 'real' food seemed a privilege. Through our parent's health issues we met a system eager to 'fix' and 'repair' but much less to provide real, human care. Even though we found an amazing school for our daughter, following innate curiosity seemed to give way to grades. Social media platforms allowed us to meet the most amazing people but also left us empty and exhausted, every single time. While we found meaning in our work, the companies we worked with were ultimately set up to gather up resources and provide wealth for an incredibly small group of people.
Now what?
Uncivilize is our attempt to find our own role in these times of change -and offer whatever we have to share. To take the nagging feeling and turn it into action. To better understand how we got here. To explore what change can look like. And to experiment with (even the tiniest) steps towards a future in which we center life itself.
Marieke Smets
Marieke unites a background in social sciences, behaviour change, human-centered design, system thinking, regenerative leadership, yoga philosophy and societal transitions.
She aims to contribute by doing what she loves most: asking 'why', unearthing deeper layers of understanding and connecting the dots.
Always followed by the question: 'what if?', applying creativity, imagination, and experimentation to explore alternative futures.
Though a bit of a sucker for learning, new angles, frameworks and theory, Marieke believes the real magic is in translating it all into practice.
Because it is in daily reality, life and work, in experiment and action, that change can ultimately take shape.
Marieke loves creating and facilitating environments in which people can go through this explorative process together, and find their path (or at least the first next step) through uncharted territory in a collaborative way.
Marieke unites a background in social sciences, behaviour change, human-centered design, system thinking, regenerative leadership, yoga philosophy and societal transitions.
She aims to contribute by doing what she loves most: asking 'why', unearthing deeper layers of understanding and connecting the dots.
Always followed by the question: 'what if?', applying creativity, imagination, and experimentation to explore alternative futures.
Though a bit of a sucker for learning, new angles, frameworks and theory, Marieke believes the real magic is in translating it all into practice.
Because it is in daily reality, life and work, in experiment and action, that change can ultimately take shape.
Marieke loves creating and facilitating environments in which people can go through this explorative process together, and find their path (or at least the first next step) through uncharted territory in a collaborative way.
Michiel Knoppert
Michiel brings a background in industrial design, spanning product, software, UX, speculative design and tech innovation. He worked on everything from skateboards and robots for Nike to smartphones for Motorola and new future human–machine interfaces and compute paradigms for Dell.
Driven by the question of how design can truly support human life, he kept running into the limits of the industrial model, where well-intentioned work at best results in “less bad” outcomes.
Always creating frameworks to understand the world and the work, he and Marieke began developing one for their own lives—first to understand how we got here, and then to see how they might act differently themselves.
The Uncivilize framework proposes a renewed role for design and designers. Michiel explores this by making new paths visible: showing what alternative futures could look like, how we might move toward them, and finding partners to start building—inviting others into the possibility.
Michiel brings a background in industrial design, spanning product, software, UX, speculative design and tech innovation. He worked on everything from skateboards and robots for Nike to smartphones for Motorola and new future human–machine interfaces and compute paradigms for Dell.
Driven by the question of how design can truly support human life, he kept running into the limits of the industrial model, where well-intentioned work at best results in “less bad” outcomes.
Always creating frameworks to understand the world and the work, he and Marieke began developing one for their own lives—first to understand how we got here, and then to see how they might act differently themselves.
The Uncivilize framework proposes a renewed role for design and designers. Michiel explores this by making new paths visible: showing what alternative futures could look like, how we might move toward them, and finding partners to start building—inviting others into the possibility.
Let's get Uncivilized!
We’re just getting started, and we’re looking for the right allies to shape this journey. If you’re a business at the edge of transformation, wondering how to grow without giving up what made your work meaningful—let’s talk. If you’re curious to test the Uncivilize framework in practice, we want to learn with you.
This is an open invitation to anyone ready to explore what comes after business-as-usual.
Let's get Uncivilized!
We’re just getting started, and we’re looking for the right allies to shape this journey. If you’re a business at the edge of transformation, wondering how to grow without giving up what made your work meaningful—let’s talk. If you’re curious to test the Uncivilize framework in practice, we want to learn with you.
This is an open invitation to anyone ready to explore what comes after business-as-usual.
Let's get Uncivilized!
We’re just getting started, and we’re looking for the right allies to shape this journey. If you’re a business at the edge of transformation, wondering how to grow without giving up what made your work meaningful—let’s talk. If you’re curious to test the Uncivilize framework in practice, we want to learn with you.
This is an open invitation to anyone ready to explore what comes after business-as-usual.