Toys for Animals /

Cultivating future advocates through innovative hands-on learning that connects new communities to conservation through animal welfare, enrichment, and behavior enhancement.

Since 2010, Handshouse Studio has created a project series that connects new communities through design/build workshops focused on enriching the wellbeing of animals in zoos and sanctuaries. Through our Toys for Elephants and Toys for Monkeys projects--now collectively referred to as Toys for Animals--we are meeting many critical needs including: 

1. Animal Wellbeing and Environmental Conversation

2. Innovative Hands-on learning for colleges, schools, and communities

3. Environmental and Social Justice

4. Connecting community through service in real-world challenges 

5. Expanding Access to Conservation Sciences and the arts

6. Cultivating Empathy, Curiosity, and Empowerment

Toys for Animals projects have been offered in partnership with colleges, public schools, zoos, and sanctuaries. Over the past 13 years we have worked with Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Boston, MA, Montserrat College of Art, Beverly, MA, Washington University, St Louis, MO, Norwell High School, Norwell, MA,  Apponequet Regional High School, Lakeville, MA,  Boston Prep Charter School, Boston, MA, the Buttonwood Park Zoo, New Bedford, MA and Franklin Park Zoo, Boston, MA, and BEES Elephant Sanctuary, in Chiang Mai, Thailand.  

Handshouse Toys for Animals projects have demonstrated more than a decade of success, are urgently needed to serve demand from zoos and sanctuaries world-wide, and have shown the potential to support more species, participants, and zoos.

Animal Wellbeing and Environmental Conversation

Animal Wellbeing is a growing concern for zoos and aquariums around the world. The Association of Zoos and Aquariums just released The Guiding Principles of AZA Animal Wellbeing Culture outlining what the community defines as best practices for animal welfare. 

The Toys for Animals projects have been meeting many of the principles defined in this updated AZA protocol, offering more than a decade of programming toward developing a model for ways zoos and aquariums can better serve the needs of the animals in their care. Our projects do this by working closely with individual animals and their caretakers creating enrichment objects that offer specific behavior enhancement to improve the wellbeing of each unique animal through user-centered design.

The projects also help spread awareness about the critical role zoos and aquariums play in environmental conservation; demonstrating to project participants some of the many ways zoos are working toward targets to restore vital global biodiversity as recently laid out by the Global Biodiversity Framework published in 2022 by the United Nations Convention on BioDiversity.  

 Innovative Hands-on Learning

The Toys for Animals workshops invite participants to research, observe, design, and create animal enrichment objects for a variety of species of animals living at local zoos and sanctuaries.

These workshops follow Handshouse Studio’s educational philosophy, offering innovative educational programming that is:

• Interdisciplinary and Project-based centered around making an object   

• Hands-on STEM and Arts Integrative 

• Shown to be successful for meeting individualized learning needs

• Engaging educational learning experiences to serve real-world needs with measurable outcomes.

By creating dialogue between participants with diverse skills such as design ideation, mixed-media fabrication, scientific observation, animal caretaking, education, environmental science, and communication, our projects bring all kinds of ways of thinking to the same table to problem-solve challenges collaboratively. 

Environmental and Social Justice

The Toys for Animals projects address environmental and social justice by engaging with the topic of biodiversity in the context of global climate crisis, addressing the disproportionate impact climate change imposes on already underserved and overburdened communities globally. Toys for Animals college-level, youth, and community projects give participants access to conservation science experiences; 

bringing entry level participants 

• into collaborations with professional conservation science and animal welfare specialists,

• offering participation in field studies with live animals in their environments, 

• inviting hands-on learning and participation in global dialogue, 

• engagement in the role zoos and sanctuaries contribute to environmental and climate justice world-wide. 

Connecting Community Through Service in Real-World Challenges 

Handshouse brings innovative hands-on learning to Toys for Animals through project-based learning, real-world design/build projects, and interdisciplinary collaborative projects where experts and beginners work side-by-side. Everyone has a seat at the table–everyone contributes and everyone learns. 

Real-world, hands-on projects like Toys for Animals give participants interdisciplinary experiences, offering awareness of interests, topics, processes, and potential careers, and access to impactful ways one can contribute to their communities. While designing and building objects to enrich the lives of actual animals in their local zoos, participants learn 

• professional design/build processes, 

• work with different materials, 

• engage in relevant environmental discussions about human impact, 

• our responsibility to others and to our shared planet. 

Participants experience their efforts positively influencing the lives of real beings, while also seeing a professional project through all the steps from information gathering, ideation, proposal, evaluation, redesign, fabrication of concept, and return on deliverables. 

All these aspects of the Toys for Animals curriculum encourage participants to become more aware, proactive citizens, inventive caretakers and stewards of our shared world.

Expanding Access to Conservation Sciences and the Arts

By actively collaborating with educational organizations and community partners to bring Toys for Animals opportunities to historically underserved communities, this project helps increase representation and access to the broader fields of climate and environmental sciences, and the arts. By bringing together communities with different perspectives and experiences, Toys for Animals  contributes toward efforts to make conservation sciences, design, engineering, and the arts–all currently predominantly white sectors–more diverse, equitable and inclusive; giving new communities pathways to engagement in disciplines to which participants might not otherwise have exposure or access. 

Cultivating Curiosity, Empathy, and Empowerment

The Toys for Animals projects cultivate future advocates through innovative hands-on learning that connects new communities to conservation through animal wellbeing, enrichment, and behavior enhancement. This kind of outside-the-box experience is exciting and therefore effective in cultivating curiosity about difficult topics like human impact on the environment, inviting empathy for others, and thus inspiring engagement and advocacy.  Through involvement in collaborative interdisciplinary goals, Toys for Animals empowers individuals to understand the many ways they can offer unique perspectives and expertise; giving each person the affirmation of being one contributing to a larger whole.

Toys for Animals is Growing!

Over the past 13 years, Toys for Animals has been offered in partnership with Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Boston, MA, Montserrat College of Art, Beverly, MA, Washington University, (St Louis, MA) Norwell High School, Norwell, MA,  Apponequet Regional High School, Lakeville, MA,  Boston Prep Charter School, Boston, MA, the Buttonwood Park Zoo, New Bedford, MA Zoo New England, Boston, MA and BEES Elephant Sanctuary, in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Handshouse Toys for Animals projects have shown the potential to support more species, participants, and zoos and so we are thrilled the list of collaborating partners is growing!

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Follow tOys for Animals in the Handshouse Journal