A professional's toolkit for working with cardboard — and the people in the room.
Built on 18+ years of Cardboardia's real-world projects: structural technique, workshop design, and the facilitation skills to run a creative space.
About Cardboardia
Cardboardia is a country without territory, founded in 2007. It's an international community of artists, engineers, designers, producers, and directors who build an economy around creative energy rather than land or natural resources — looking for that resource in human nature itself rather than in the world around it. Every project, from workshops to carnivals to street performances, is interactive: the audience takes part at every stage, from preparation to the finished piece.
Who this is for
Artists and designers adding a new material to their practice. Theater and event teams building sets and props at scale. Teachers and school staff running hands-on projects they can repeat for every event. Festival and workshop organizers working with people who've never touched a box cutter before.
Two things you'll use
The material
Cutting, bending, joining, reinforcing. Ten units built from the techniques Cardboardia uses on its own builds.
The room
A full unit on running the workshop itself: setting up the space, reading the group, keeping people safe, and moving an idea from nothing to a finished object, with people who've never done this before.
What's inside
Ten units, built to go in order — each one short, practical, and ending in a quick review.
A sample lesson
Unit 5, Lesson 5 — joining corrugated cardboard with hot glue, free to watch.
From principle to your own thing
The techniques here — how pieces join, bend, reinforce, and move — are the same ones Cardboardia uses in its own puppets, sets, and installations. One full unit is dedicated to making cardboard move, which is where this is most useful for puppet-makers: a puppet-maker combines these techniques to build the puppet they imagined. A space designer ends up with the room they pictured. A couple of parents organizing a school event get the decor they wanted. The technique adapts to whatever you're making.
What people get from it
Everyone who's completed this course says the same thing: it gives them the confidence to work with a group of complete beginners and get a result that looks good.
In their own words
From the Russian run of this course.
"The course helped me discover cardboard as a new artistic language. The attention to safety, materials, and practical tools — from the hot glue gun to different grades of cardboard — was especially valuable. Afterward I completed my first real project for a corrugated packaging factory, and felt like I could do more."
"The course covers all the basics: organizing the work, fastening cardboard, which techniques to use. People with almost no experience built our set pieces, and the result was better than we expected. The cardboard held up through hours of play from adults and kids, and the pieces are still standing."
"I organized a school assembly as a cardboard procession and creative lab. I picked up so many tools, construction options, joints, shapes, and solutions for myself — life is definitely not going to be the same."
"I built a mobile cardboard shadow theater with my students. I showed them how to build the box and the stand — they did the rest themselves. This fall the piece, a shadow theater based on E.T.A. Hoffmann's tales, was selected for the Baltic Design 2026 biennale at Kaliningrad's Historical and Art Museum."
"I used it to launch a creative workshop for teachers, built on the Institute's research method. Every module is its own investigation — that's exactly where to start when you're building your own workshop: try it, understand it, see the result."
"I built sets and costumes from cardboard for children's plays. Every beginning theater teacher should take this course — it opens your eyes to how you can build sets and props for any children's show using cardboard."
Cardboardia Research Institute
A working community
This is Cardboardia's own internal training, built over 18 years and opened up to anyone who wants it. Finishing the course connects you with other people doing this work — you can bring your own projects, or propose a lesson of your own. One full unit is about finding creative energy, and the community is part of that too.
We built this because we love doing it, and we want to pass that on.
Access
One year of full access to all 10 units. The 50% discount is for our early access cohort — in exchange, we ask for a short feedback chat and a testimonial as the course develops.
For teams, schools, and organizations
Buying for a group — staff, volunteers, a whole department. We set it up as a bulk license, with a few working sessions and help building the technical rider for your event.