Services
Client
Johns Hopkins Center for Indigenous Health (in partnership with the LEGO Foundation)
Project
Global SPIRIT
Services
Co-design & facilitation
Brand & visual identity
Website design & development
Digital storytelling
Global SPIRIT is an international initiative supporting Indigenous-led approaches to child development through intergenerational play. Funded by the LEGO Foundation’s Build a World of Play Challenge, the project brings together 23 partners across Aotearoa, Australia, Canada and the United States, including Indigenous health authorities, researchers and community organisations.
The challenge was to create a digital home for this network — one that could hold shared knowledge and stories while respecting the distinct cultures, languages and sovereignty of each Indigenous partner.
The platform needed to do more than explain the project. It had to reflect Indigenous ways of knowing, centre play as a source of strength, support collaboration and celebrate diverse cultures and identities.
For Purpose worked alongside the Global SPIRIT partners using a co-design process grounded in listening, making and collective sense-making.
Rather than starting with a fixed brief, we created space for partners to shape the narrative together using play not just as a theme, but as a way of working.
The process unfolded across four stages:
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Opening (online): partners shared stories of people, places and practices that reflect play in their own contexts, establishing shared values and relationships.
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Weaving together (Ōtepoti/Dunedin): a two-day in-person wānanga to surface common threads and important differences, forming the foundation for the project’s narrative and visual direction.
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Sharing and refining: shared narratives were translated into early digital concepts—visual identity, structure and wireframes—tested and refined through collective feedback.
- Closing: The final design and functionality were shaped to ensure the site felt authentic, usable and owned by the collective.
The resulting website is both a storybank and a resource hub, designed to feel grounded, tactile and connected to people and place.
Built on CloudCannon for ease of ongoing management, the site includes:
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A shared visual identity inspired by children’s drawings, natural textures and movement, creating a sense of warmth and life.
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A Storybank where partners can share lived experience, knowledge and practice in an accessible, non-hierarchical way.
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Regional spaces for Aotearoa, Australia, Canada and the United States, allowing local stories and partners to be foregrounded within a shared global frame.
- Lightweight interactive elements—audio, animation and motion—used sparingly to support a sense of connection rather than distraction.
The Global SPIRIT website now acts as a shared digital gathering place for a complex international collaboration. It provides a clear, welcoming way for partners to share knowledge, for researchers to engage respectfully with Indigenous perspectives, and for the project’s purpose to be communicated without losing cultural integrity. Over the next five years, Global SPIRIT aims to support 20,000 children and 12,000 caregivers. The platform plays a critical role in that work, helping preserve and share Indigenous wisdom on play, parenting and intergenerational connection, while reinforcing the autonomy and leadership of the communities involved.
