Tom Metcalfe is a post-disciplinary 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 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.