Meet the BOUNCE Challengers!
Each of them brings bold ideas, creative drive, and a powerful vision for the future — and we can’t wait to see what they create. They will work alongside A Playful City, who will guide them through the process to consider how we use our public spaces with a focus on Drury Street.
Karl Toomey
Creative Director
Karl is a designer, strategist and creative director working at Wove in Dublin. With a focus on creative storytelling and joyful innovation, he enjoys working on projects in the education, civic and cultural sectors. During his spare time he also runs a creative practice called Ktooms that focusses on exploring contemporary culture through play and humour.
Luciano Jacob
Head of Big Ideas & Creative Director, Escalate
Driven by culture, creativity, and a sense of fun, Jacob approaches every brief with one goal: to find fresh, unexpected ways to solve real problems and move people. Whether through storytelling, design, social content, or brand platforms/
As Head of Big Ideas & Creative Director at Escalate, a social agency, Jacob leads the agency’s creative vision. He pitches bold, culturally resonant ideas that spark conversation and drive business growth. His role blends strategy with storytelling, inspiring teams to think big, push boundaries, and deliver work that’s both effective and entertaining.
Jacob has developed award-winning campaigns for brands like Pizza Hut, Sysco, Tropicana, Naked, Pat the Baker, Supermac's, L'Oreal and the National Dairy Council. His personal project NeyType — a typography experiment based on Neymar’s World Cup falls — received international coverage in 150 countries from CNN, BBC, and ESPN. He believes creativity can change the world, and he’s helping shape that future, one big idea at a time.
Laura Merrigan
Graphic Designer
A Dublin-based freelance creative designer, Laura has over 15 years' experience in the publishing industry and is a former design lecturer at Dublin Design Institute. She has led and delivered successful projects across print and digital, working with and for some brilliant clients along the way. She’s happiest when iterating, working closely with text and layouts, and doing hands on design work.
Naturally curious, Laura was delighted to become and Bounce Challenger and have the opportunity to collaborate with and learn from such a diverse and creative group. Passionate about her city, she’s delighted to contribute her ideas to the Bounce X A Playful City’s inspiring project and excited about the potential of the outcomes.
Areeb Tariq
Multimedia Artist; Founder & Creative Head, Ajeeb Studio
Areeb is an experimental visual artist, educator, and the force behind Karachi’s Ajeeb Studio. He specializes in multimedia storytelling through brand identity, digital art, fashion, and installations. Notable clients include Spotify, Uber, Red Bull, and Coke Studio. He also curates the “Ajeeb Design Fest,” and teaches extensively, having impacted over 2,000 students.
Aoife Flynn
Art Director & Senior Designer, Language
Aoife is an experienced designer and art director based in Dublin, with a background in advertising, design, and art education. She currently works at Language, an independent research, design and campaign consultancy. She is also a practicing illustrator and visual artist, with a background in curatorial work, where past projects focused on the idea of the Utopia and imagined futures. She was interested in the Bounce challenge as an opportunity to help shape the future of the city, to make it a more inclusive and equitable space for its citizens.
Treasa Burns
Freelance Designer
Treasa is a senior creative focusing on branding, packaging, and experiential graphic design. She currently works with firms like Poppulo and previously held roles in the creative consultancy space. An active member of Dublin’s design community, she engages through speaking gigs and workshops for groups such as CreativeMornings
Sarah Carroll Kelly
Owner & Designer, Shock of Grey
Sarah Carroll Kelly is the founder and designer of Award winning (IDI Jewellery Award winner 2024, International Buyers Choice Award at Showcase 2024) Shock of Grey Statement Jewellery. With sustainability as a key focus, each piece is handcrafted in Dublin 8 using FSC certified wood, low emissions paint & 100% recycled boxes. Her work is stocked in over 50 stockists in Ireland, UK, USA, Germany & Canada including the Museum of Contemporary Art in New York and IMMA in Dublin.She has run workshops as part of Earth Rising in IMMA, Wolf & Badger London and Opium/Blas Dublin and is an industry collaborator with the IDI, NCAD circular economy MA students and a member of the Council of Irish Fashion Designers.
I've been interested in the work of a Playful city for some time and as a city dweller who has kids we use the city as an extension of our home like a back garden or yard. Huge interest as a designer in Architecture which heavily influences my own work.
Áine Power
Service Designer, Context Studio
Áine is a multidisciplinary human-centred designer at Context Studio, with a strong interest in placemaking, sustainability, and social innovation. She holds a BA and MA in Visual Communication from Technological University Dublin, where her postgraduate thesis explored cultural identity and place in post-industrial Ireland.
Notable work includes projects for Creative Ireland, the arts sector, and the public health sector, using citizen engagement and service design methodologies to understand and improve user experiences within complex systems. The Creative Ireland project From Plan To Do received an IDI Award in the Experience Design category.
Áine brings experience in facilitation, user research, and systems thinking, and is excited to explore how cross-disciplinary collaboration can create meaningful, grounded impact in communities. She looks forward to working alongside others who are passionate about reimagining public spaces.
Seán O’Beacháin
Founder & Creative Director, So Studio
Sean has worked with leading agencies and brands across Dublin, London and beyond – spanning culture, education, tech and consumer goods. He is drawn to projects that invite collaboration, spark curiosity and create space for new ways of thinking.
Through his practice, So Studio, he focuses on work that is thoughtful, people-centred and grounded in listening. He believes in the value of the early, messy stages: asking questions, exploring ideas and shaping direction together.
He was drawn to the Bounce Challenge because it reflects how he likes to work – open, exploratory and centred on process over perfection. As someone who lives and works in Dublin, he cares deeply about how the city is shaped: creating public spaces that feel inclusive, generous and full of potential.
Fergus Craddock
Inclusion Manager, Education and Training Boards Ireland (ETBI)
Fergus is the Further Education and Training (FET) Inclusion Manager in ETBI with responsibility for coordinating and promoting a collaborative and integrated approach to support inclusion strategies across the ETB FET sector. This role has a particular emphasis on providing consistent learner supports through universal design and targeting and facilitating participation by the most marginalised groups in society. This involves working with a wide range of stakeholders including public and third sector bodies in implementing national strategies and initiatives.
Fergus has over two decades experience working in adult and community education, and has a particular interest in community education, active citizenship & voter education and promoting FET as a means to enhance social cohesion for migrant communities.
Joanne Byrne
Graphic Designer
Joanne is a graphic designer with a background in exhibition design and a love for storytelling in the built environment. With 20 years industry experience, she has worked independently for the past ten years on projects in the cultural, corporate and heritage sectors. Joanne is a visiting lecturer at the Institute of Art, Design + Technology.
Joanne is excited by the role design plays in placemaking, from the functionality of wayfinding to the use of large-scale graphics and installations to forge meaningful connections between people and their surroundings. Her experience in the museum industry has informed her approach to creating narrative concepts for environments, with visitor interaction at their core. Joanne's work has been recognised by the 100 Archive, ICAD and the IDI.
TJ Ryan
Creative Experience Lead, Accenture (The Dock)
TJ was raised in Minneapolis and is now based in Dublin, Ireland. He leads Creative Experience Design at Accenture’s global innovation and research center, The Dock, where he collaborates with designers, technologists, and strategists to bring bold ideas to life through immersive experiences and prototypes.
With over a decade of experience in New York and Dublin, including roles at Droga5 and VICE Media, TJ brings a unique blend of creative thinking and entrepreneurial production. His work spans film, technology, events, fabrication, and music, allowing him to translate cultural stories, brands, and technologies into engaging and meaningful experiences.
Holding an MA in Design for Change, TJ’s practice is grounded in social design, purposeful creativity, and cross-disciplinary collaboration. He is passionate about creativity that connects communities and drives positive change.
TJ is excited by the Bounce Challenge as an opportunity to bring creativity and design to Dublin that creates tangible, lasting change. As someone raising a young family in the city, he’s deeply motivated to help shape a more inclusive, accessible, and vibrant urban environment by building meaningful experiences that improve life for everyone in the city.
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Stay Tuned for updates as the team work through this Challenge.
Chellenge Methodology
This Challenge is built as an interactive learning experience—what Chellengers bring to the table is just as valuable as what they take away. Through collaboration and critical engagement, they'll help shape new ideas about public spaces and design’s broader impact.
The interactional educational model represents a cutting-edge shift in how knowledge is created, shared, and applied—moving beyond passive learning to a dynamic, participatory process. Unlike traditional top-down instruction, this model centres on dialogue, collaboration, and mutual discovery between participants, and their environments. It fosters critical thinking through real-world engagement, encouraging participants to co-construct meaning, challenge assumptions, and develop adaptive problem-solving skills.
By integrating interdisciplinary methods, lived experience, and reflective practice, participants actively shape the systems and communities they’re part of, making it especially relevant in complex, fast-evolving fields like design, civic innovation, and social impact.
