Tom Metcalfe is an interdisciplinary designer and researcher. His work invites audiences to notice previously unseen relations with Earth's rhythms and temporalities. Always situated in place, his practice is inspired, informed, and co-created with both humans and non-humans. It evolves through an open, conversational quality that responds to the complexities, entanglements, and relationality of place.

He works across multiple mediums and materials, creating Performative Artefacts – playful objects that act as gentle provocations. These artefacts often utilise technology in subtle ways, supporting human–nonhuman intra-action and amplifying the texture, capacity, and magical animism of object-based interaction.

Metcalfe’s work is grounded in critical posthumanism: a convergence of post-anthropocentrism, post-humanism, Industry 4.0, and the sixth mass extinction. It decentres the human, challenging dominant ideologies of individualism, universalism, rationalism, techno-solutionism, and entrenched dualisms such as human/nature, subject/object and mind/matter. In practice, this lens informs his methods, materials, and design decisions, working towards a design ethic that is situated, open-ended, and accountable to more-than-human worlds.

Metcalfe founded his own studio in 2014 and is based in Dundee, Scotland.

He is also Consultant Design Director at Strange Thoughts, London; Honorary Associate Professor at the University of Bristol; Doctoral Researcher at the University of St. Andrews; and Visiting Tutor at the Glasgow School of Art.

He lives in northeast Fife with his partner and two children.

Client Highlights
Commonwealth Games 2022; Skoda; Selfridges; British Library; Reach; UNMADE; Senseye (Siemens), WWT and Raucous Theatre. Brand activations for: Currys, YO! Sushi, Ocado, Beavertown, Premier Inn, Deliveroo, Unilever and Innis and Gunn. Brand experiences for Adidas, Marriott, Sky, Twitter, and Guardian. Collaborating with agencies like Publicis, Saatchi, W Comms, Golin, Here Be Dragons, PHD Media, Manifest and Uniform.

R&D Funders
Research and Development funded by: Google, Unilever, UKRI (incl. Innovate UK, AHRC, EPSRC, ESRC), Arts Council England, Creative England, Creative Scotland, Creative XR, Arts Council Tokyo

Selected Exhibitions, Performances and Events
Edinburgh Fringe, Edinburgh (2023); Coventry UK City of Culture, Herbert Gallery, Coventry (2022); MAYFEST, Bristol Old Vic, Bristol (2022); Materia Gris, CentroCentro, Madrid (2021); Playable City Tokyo, 3331 Arts Chiyoda, Tokyo (2018); Google Digital News Initiative, Amsterdam, Netherlands (2018); Victoria and Albert Museum, London (2009, 2011, 2014, 2016, 2024); London Design Festival, Brompton Design District, London (2012, 2014, 2016, 2018).

Selected Talks and Workshops
International Festival of Journalism, Perugia, Italy (2017); Interaction16, Helsinki, Finland (2016); Crafts Council: Make:Shift, London, UK (2014); O’Reilly Solid, San Francisco, USA (2014, 2015); and SXSW, Austin, USA (2012, 2013, 2016).

Selected Academic Conference Contributions and Journal Publications
CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems; TEI, Tangible, Embedded and Embodied Interactions; ITS, Interactive Tabletops & Surfaces; CHI Play, Computer-Human Interaction in Play; IDC, Interaction Design and Children; ACI, Conference on Animal-Computer Interaction; International Journal of Human-Computer Studies.

Press
Brand Activations have regularly featured in Daily Newspapers across Print and Digital, national, and international. Other work featured in design magazines like Wallpaper, Blueprint and Creative Review.