Esme Leparoux
(She/Her)
I’m a designer with a hands-on practice rooted in materials, making, and experimentation. I focus on bringing that same curiosity to branding and systems design – crafted with intention and built around connection. I care about making work that is meaningful, and that resonates with the people it’s made for.
Handfast
Heritage craft skills once essential to survival on the Isle of Lewis are at risk of disappearing. The knowledge lives in people, carried in the hands of older generations who learned through making, doing, and passing skills on. When those hands are lost, so too is the knowledge they hold.
Handfast is a travelling organisation designed to keep endangered crafts alive through intergenerational exchange. Foundation workshops introduce the basic skills of a single craft – such as cordage or woodwork – led by a local practitioner known as the ‘Knowing Hand’. Combination workshops follow, unlocked through participation, bringing together two crafts and two practitioners to create hybrid objects from materials foraged from the Lewis landscape. This structure of delivery would scale up to create cross-community, cross-regional hybrid crafts while building an intergenerational knowledge network.
The system operates through three roles: Speaking Hands organise, Knowing Hands teach, and Learning Hands attend workshops and build up skills. Through this exchange, stories are shared, relationships are built, and heritage skills are carried forward.
The hybrid stool output nestled within the environment from where its materials were sourced and the hands that made it
Generations learning and making collaboratively
A wooden comb output paired with cordage to create a new hybrid outcome
A participant making during one of my pilot walking workshops on the Isle of Lewis
Foraging for materials found within the landscape
A preview into the workshops Handfast offers and a celebration of the crafts that reside there.
The Nervous System – Creating Future Experiences Part 1
Our group explored a future world set 10 years ahead from a public and civic standpoint. We focused on the media, imagining a future where censorship has become increasingly extreme.
The final exhibit presented future headlines woven into a media web, representing how narratives are filtered, censored, and controlled. Interactive elements allow headlines to obscure what others see, while viewfinders create the illusion of choice — offering visitors a false sense of control over the information they consume.
Common Ground – Creating Future Experiences Part 2
INVISIBLE THREATS, VISIBLE TRUTHS
With the rise of airborne microplastics comes a surge of misinformation and panic, threatening public health. Gross Superblock Wellbeing (GSW) is a holistic health monitoring system which looks after the city though trusted community ‘Harvesters’ who monitor airborne microplastics using a diagnostic badge.
Data flows into the local hub to be monitored by a designated Holistic Health Facilitator who can provide localised, accurate information and advice via mapped information boards. By making the invisible threats visible, the system empowers residents to make confident, well- informed decisions.
