Each year, BioArt Laboratories is committed to providing visitors with a meaningful and engaging experience. In 2025, the Guided Tours are also offered as part of the solidarity programme and are specifically tailored to different audiences. This approach strengthens the connection between the activities and the tangible contributions participants make to projects and facilities. The tours consistently incorporate the core values of BioArt Laboratories, highlighting bio art, ongoing research trajectories, and the organisation’s underlying vision. In this way, they serve as an interpretive framework that encourages reflection, engagement, and a deeper understanding of the work and its broader societal context.

The guided tours during the Dutch Design Week deserve a special mention. With the exhibition The Symbiocene Forest – Roots, a large and diverse field of contributions was brought together—featuring works by more than eighty artists and designers—which can be overwhelming for visitors with limited time or contextual background. The guided tours therefore played an essential role as instruments of mediation and knowledge transfer. Led by experienced guides with subject-matter expertise, visitors were taken through the exhibition via carefully constructed narratives, timed to moments where interaction with participating makers could deepen the experience and encourage meaningful exchange.

These tours not only offered insight into the works themselves, but also into the underlying concepts, motivations, and working methods of the participating artists and designers. Through this contextual layering, the exhibition was made accessible to a broad and diverse audience, including press, students, local residents, and larger groups such as employees of ASML. For students of the iArts programme, a specifically tailored tour was developed, placing additional emphasis on translating the content into their own artistic and research practices. In this session, attention was given not only to the themes and content of the exhibition, but also to the methodological and interdisciplinary approaches evident in the works. By explicitly linking these to their curriculum—such as research-driven making, transdisciplinary collaboration, and the relationship between art, science, and technology—the tour functioned as a deepened learning experience.

As a result, this specific tour served not only as an introduction to the exhibition, but as an educational framework that encouraged students to critically reflect on their own practice and their position within broader ecological and societal questions.