Luxury is Nature

Hi! I am Sakina, the founder of Pop Unfold.

Finding playful, outdoors-promoting tools has been on my active radar since 2018.
I studied Environment and Planning at Roskilde University in Denmark, worked with EU Climate KIC, and later with the Danish Nature Conservation Association, all while co-parenting two curious children.

The question of how to bring people more outdoors and closer to nature, especially young people, was a constant thread through my work and studies. I also learned that my eldest child had developed a dooming perspective when he expressed 'If everything looks bad with climate and environment, why don't we just consume all that our hearts wish. It will all go down anyway'. From that moment I shifted finding ways to turn focus towards appreciation for Nature as luxury.

On one such search in mid-2022, I came across Silvia Hijano's interactive course on paper pop-ups. I was blown away. The way she beautifully captured her nature observations, and transformed them into stunning paper artworks was magical! The experience of creating and experiencing her illustrated artworks was both focus and excitement capturing.

I am in love with nature. Every detail, pattern, colour nuance, shape, structure and system fascinates me. I am in awe of its complexity, and of the simplicity with which it all exists.

I looked for people who combined nature studies and outdoor time with the making of these mathematical, artistic paper mechanisms. Workshops that captured discoveries in something tangible. I found none. So I began designing them myself. I practised. I studied. I simplified. I challenged the practice until it could be shared. With deep gratitude to the early groups from Switzerland and Denmark, who shaped this practice with me. You know who you are :)

And that is how Pop Unfold was born. A fusion of my deep love for nature and practical, usable craft and art, blended with individual steered experiencing and learning.

It is an invitation to get close to Nature's details, impressions and expressions of which will hopefully keep unfolding.

- Sakina