You already know they need to be outside.
Getting young people outdoors is proven — they thrive in nature. The challenge has never been whether; it’s how: how to make outdoor time purposeful, structured, and genuinely accessible for the young people who find most environments overwhelming — without coach travel, risk assessments for an unfamiliar venue, or an off-site day that costs more in recovery than it gives.
So we come to you. A sensory garden of interactive instruments of light and sound, set up in your own grounds — for a few days, a term, or permanently. Your students get structured creative time outside, in a familiar place, at their own pace. You do the right thing and meet your recording needs at the same time.
What a session looks like.
Everything in the garden is designed to be interacted with. A stepping stone answers a footstep with a low, warm tone. A sculpture catches the sunlight and scatters it across the grass. A hand near a sensor sends colour rippling through water. Every instrument is tuned to the same musical key, so nothing a young person does can clash with anything else — there is no wrong note, no wrong way to play.
Nobody performs. Nobody is herded. A young person can spend the whole session at one instrument, or drift between them, or sit at the edge and let it settle around them — and the quiet way out is part of the design: space to step back, regulate, and return when ready.
Because everyone’s input weaves into the same shared soundscape, something else happens too: young people who find conventional socialising exhausting or impossible end up creating together — connection through the doing, with no social script required.
Designed from your most sensitive young people first.
Most provision is designed for the average, with accessibility retrofitted. We invert it. We design from the needs of autistic people, people with sensory processing differences, and disabled people first — and build outward, which makes the garden better for every child in it.
That means no loud, sudden or overwhelming stimulation; no forced pace; no agenda. However small the action a young person can make, we design a way in for it — presence, proximity or a glance can be enough to play. Blind, deaf and physically disabled young people all have full creative routes in, through sound, touch and presence, woven through the design rather than bolted on.
And there is no separate, adapted version for disabled students: one garden, one shared experience, built so everyone can shape it together.
Three ways it can live with you.
- Pop-up We set up for a few days or a half-term, deliver the sessions, and remove it without a trace.
- Rotating The core stays; instruments refresh on a rolling basis, so there’s always a reason to return — and the favourites remain.
- Permanent A dedicated sensory garden, built into your own grounds, yours for every season.
We work to your space, your needs and your budget — from a corner of a playground to the grounds of a residential setting, and at arboretums and public gardens for school visits. Quieter, tailored private sessions outside public hours are available too, shaped to all needs.
Engagement you can see and record.
The garden is designed to give you the observations your system needs you to record: which instruments draw a young person in, how long they stay, what they return to, how they engage alongside others. Staff see it happen in real time; the garden’s own interaction log backs it up — nothing strapped to anyone, nothing clinical, consent throughout.
Before-and-after check-ins stay human and conversational — and the people who know each young person best, your staff and their families, hold the baseline and see the difference.
Where we are now — and an honest invitation.
We’re at the start. This is our first year: researching, co-designing and testing the first instruments with the young people they’re designed for. That means early partner schools and settings don’t just book the sensory garden — they shape it. If you want your students’ needs designed in from the beginning, this is the year to talk to us.
The imagery on this page is concept visualisation — where we’re going, not photographs of a finished garden.
Start the conversation.
Email info@interwovenartscic.org and tell us about your setting, your grounds and your young people. We’ll share how we work, what a visit or residency could look like — and the full plan if you want it.