About
Creativity and collaboration are our species' superpowers. Sometimes we forget. Children remind us.
What is CRE8 Foundation?
3:10What
Every project starts with a short instruction anyone can follow. Children in different places answer it in their own way.
How
Anyone can run a workshop: artists, art teachers, volunteers, parents. In schools, homes, libraries, community spaces and art centres.
Why
Making something with someone else teaches you to trust your own ideas, and theirs.
Collaborative art
Collaborative art is made by more than one hand. At CRE8 an artist writes a short instruction, and people in different places answer it, each in their own way. Every answer carries the name of the person who made it.
The artwork is what the answers make together: a wall, a book, a film, a mural. No single drawing could show it alone.
It belongs to a long history. The Surrealists passed one drawing from hand to hand; later artists wrote instructions for others to carry out. CRE8 does it with children and grown-ups around the world.
The CRE8 way
What every workshop passes on, in four steps.
So what?
Just start. It doesn't have to be perfect.Yes, and
Say yes, then add more.Follow your excitement
Do what excites you. Keep going.Pass it on
Show it. Name it. Share it.
Barú, Colombia 
Brandenburg, Germany 
How the works work
The instruction
“Draw an alien. Make it realistic.” Everyone starts in the same place.
Many answers
Everyone answers in their own way. No two alike.
Made together
Grown-ups draw too. Drawings are passed on and added to.
Shown as art
Every work on the wall, whole, with the same space.
One work
All the answers side by side. That is the artwork.
More about how the works work
Every CRE8 work starts with a short instruction. Draw an alien. Make it realistic. Or: one line each, taking turns. It is short on purpose. It gives everyone the same place to begin and leaves the rest open.
Then the answers come. A child in Bogotá and a child in Helsinki hear the same words and draw two aliens that have never met. None is graded. Nobody tells them there's no wrong answer. They find out at the wall.
The work is made together. Two people share one sheet and take turns, and the drawing becomes a conversation without words. Drawings travel: children in Thailand drew them, students in California animated them, children in Colombia gave them sound. The grown-ups in the room draw too. Nobody stands outside as a judge.
Then the work is shown, whole, on a wall, every answer with the same space. That is when it becomes art.
So the single drawing is only part of the work. The artwork is all the answers together, side by side, from people who have never met. You see how differently we all see, and that we can still make something together.
The Most Realistic Alien began in Berlin in 2009 as a competition: the most realistic alien would win. Today no alien is graded, and nobody explains 'realistic'. The children decide, and on that, they are the authority.
Mission
We bring children and artists together to make artworks across borders, so every child keeps trusting their own creativity.
Vision
A generation that never loses its spark: creative grown-ups who have made things with people from across the world, are not afraid of the other, and shape the world with joy.
What we care about
Creativity
Everyone can make something no one has seen before.
Collaboration
Working with someone changes what you make.
Community
Work made together belongs to everyone who made it.
The child has a hundred languages … They tell the child that the hundred is not there. The child says: No way. The hundred is there.
Ole Ukena, founder
Ole Ukena began running art workshops with children in 2008. In March 2009 he showed an exhibition in Rishikesh, India, with workshops for children: black-and-white portraits hung together in a tree, The Magic Tree.
The same year in Berlin came the first Most Realistic Alien, a drawing competition: draw an alien, and the most realistic one wins.
In March 2010, at Ramana's Garden in Rishikesh, the children showed their drawings and photographs to everyone who came, hung all over the garden, in the trees. That was the moment: children's work can be shown seriously, as art.
Loop workshop, Brandenburg, Germany, June 2010
Ole's story, in full
From those workshops came Ping Pong Painting, a conversation in drawing between two people. You learn about conversation without words. From it came the other projects and the foundation itself.
For years CRE8 ran workshops and exhibitions with children around the world. Then the donations stopped, and Ole focused on his work as an artist. The pause was honest, and it was necessary.
Now CRE8 is beginning a new chapter: part of Ole's work as an artist, and a foundation that pays for itself, with a small team and volunteers.
Ole's own work explores the same questions: what appears when people make things together.
The work so far
Since 2008 CRE8 has run collaborative art workshops with children around the world, among them in India, Germany, Spain, Thailand, Colombia, Finland and the United States.
The work was shown in exhibitions, from Rishikesh in March 2009 to Connected Creativity at the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre in January 2013.
Since 2008
What happened, year by year. Dates come from the notes written at the time, or from the dates on the photographs.
2008
- Ole Ukena begins running art workshops with children.
2009
- MarchRishikesh, India. An exhibition with workshops for children. Portraits hang together in a tree: The Magic Tree.
- Berlin, Germany. The first Most Realistic Alien, a drawing competition at Spielraum Gallery: draw an alien, and the most realistic one wins.
2010
- MarchRishikesh, India. An exhibition at Ramana's Garden: drawings and photographs hung all over the garden and in the trees.
- JuneBrandenburg, Germany. A Loop workshop: Ping Pong Painting and live looping with Axl Makana of Mutabor.
- AugustBerlin, Germany. The Most Realistic Alien with children at Spielraum Gallery (6 August). The next day, a workshop at Goldmund Festival, Biesenthal.
- SeptemberBarcelona, Spain. Abracadabra, an exhibition of CRE8 work.
- DecemberUdaipur, India. The Most Realistic Alien.
2011
- JanuaryRishikesh, India. The Ideal Place at Ramana's Garden by the river: children draw a better place to live as one large mural.
- FebruaryRishikesh, India. The second Photo Rally, with Kishan (14), Anrurag (17) and Carlos Lopez.
- MarchRishikesh, India. The Photo Rally exhibition at Ramana's Garden.
- May to JuneNongplalai, Thailand. Ping Pong Painting at Nongyetjai school, with Thaillywood.
- JuneNongplalai, Thailand. D.A.S. Project, part one: drawing. Hundreds of characters, props and backgrounds.
- Bogotá, Colombia. The Most Realistic Alien.
- DecemberGermany. A class at a German school draws aliens (15 December).
- DecemberHuntington Beach, California. D.A.S. Project, part two: animation.
2012
- FebruaryCan Masdeu, Barcelona, Spain. A Sunday of aliens and Ping Pong Painting with families.
- MarchTorrelles del Llobregat, Spain. A week at Can Coll primary school with more than 100 pupils, ending in an exhibition.
- MarchTaganga, Colombia. D.A.S. Project, part three: sound.
- Santa Monica, Los Angeles. A Photo Rally with Jose Rodriguez (14).
- JuneThaillywood, Thailand. CRE8's first exhibition in Asia, with a wall of over 300 aliens.
- SeptemberThaillywood, Thailand. Art in Public Space: children re-imagine the gold dome on the roof.
- NovemberThaillywood, Thailand. The ink blowing workshop.
2013
- JanuaryBangkok, Thailand. Connected Creativity at the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre. The D.A.S. documentary has its premiere.
- FebruaryEast Helsinki, Finland. The Most Realistic Alien at Kellohalli library, run by Maria of Flukso.
- JuneA new CRE8 website.
- Chonburi, Thailand. From Trash to Treasure with ISE International School, and aliens the next day.
2014
- FebruaryAn article about CRE8 in Renegade Collective magazine. The last post on the old website. Then the donations stopped, and CRE8 paused.
2023 to 2025
- Ubud, Bali. AIR Open Artist Residency: an open studio and an exhibition.
Not yet dated
- India. Q & A Video: children answer a question sent by a child in another country, and ask one back.
- Northern Thailand. Farang Beatbox and Let's create., two short films.
- Berlin. Collage with Paula: children make self-portraits.
2026
- CRE8 is beginning a new chapter.
People
CRE8 was made by many people. This was the team in 2013.
A new chapter
In 2026 CRE8 is beginning a new chapter: part of Ole Ukena's work as an artist, and a foundation that pays for itself.