Dear TOM Community,

If you’ve been part of TOM in any way over the last 10 years, we’d love you to join us to celebrate 10 years of TOM: Melbourne and everything we’ve achieved together.

This evening is a chance to celebrate the solutions and ideas that your lived experience helped shape and spend time with others who have contributed to TOM over the years. There will be drinks and canapés!

Date: Thursday 26th March
Time: 6pm – 8pm
Venue: Richmond (venue details will be communicated closer to the event)

The TOM Team looks forward to celebrating with you!

More information and RSVP here: 10 years of TOM: Melbourne – Thank you gathering

The TOM Team looks forward to celebrating with you!  

After 10 wonderful years of work in inclusive design and assistive technology, we will be closing TOM: Melbourne at the end of this financial year (30 June 2026).

While this marks the end of this chapter, it is also an opportunity to reflect with pride on what we have built together. Since 2016, we have demonstrated that when people with a disability lead and are meaningfully involved in the innovation process, extraordinary things happen. Together, we have cultivated a community where lived experience and technical capability meet in practical, generous and deeply human ways.

To all our need-knowers, makers, volunteers, partners, mentors, advocates, sponsors and supporters: Thank you! We simply could not have done this without you.

Through makeathons, university collaborations, school programs, product development and community partnerships, ideas have transformed into tangible solutions that meaningfully improve participation and daily life. Just as importantly, we have helped shape how emerging designers, engineers and organisations think about co-design, access and inclusion.

The need for inclusive, lived-experience-led innovation remains strong, and we are proud that many of the principles TOM championed are now more visible across education, industry and community settings.

Warmly,

Debbie Dadon AM, Founding Director
Narelle Hinkley, General Manager

Over the past few weeks, we’ve been working closely with Canine Comprehension to co-design and build a set of sensory vests for their therapy dogs. These vests are intended to support students with additional learning needs by offering calming textures, visual cues, and simple communication elements that can be used during school visits and wellbeing sessions.

The Makeathon brought together volunteers, dog-handlers, and community members to explore what makes a vest both comfortable for the dogs and genuinely useful in a classroom setting. Participants sketched, tested materials, and sewed multiple prototypes, considering factors like fit, weight, cleaning, and how children might interact with the vests during moments of stress or transition.

What stood out throughout the process was the collaborative spirit: handlers shared insights from working daily with their dogs, volunteers brought sewing and design skills, and everyone contributed ideas that balanced practicality with care.

We’d like to extend a warm thank you to Canine Comprehension, to our volunteers for their time and craft, and to the dogs who patiently modelled every iteration. We look forward to seeing these vests in use and to continuing this partnership to support students’ wellbeing through thoughtful, inclusive design.

In our recent collaboration with RMIT Industrial Design, a group of committed students worked alongside three of our Need‑Knowers to co‑design assistive solutions that respond to their real everyday challenges.

• For 15‑year-old Cai, we explored a foldable and compact tray with modular supports — designed to help him carry items on his lap while using a manual wheelchair, so drinks or snacks stay secure even when both hands are needed to move.

• For Joanne, an enthusiastic Lawn Bowls player living with reduced strength on one side of her body, the team developed a one‑handed bowl‑lifter — including a latch mechanism — with the aim of helping her lift bowls independently and continue enjoying sport.

• For Morgan, a passionate candle‑maker and small business owner, we worked on a modular candle‑making setup that stabilises moulds, helps with wick positioning and wax pouring, so she can work more safely and confidently on her craft.

Throughout each project, RMIT students engaged with lived experience, learned about inclusive design, and applied their skills to create thoughtful, user‑informed solutions. And perhaps more importantly, our Need‑Knowers — Cai, Joanne, and Morgan — generously shared their time, feedback and hopes.

We want to extend our sincere thanks to RMIT Industrial Design for facilitating this collaboration, to the students for their creativity and dedication, and to our Need‑Knowers for their openness, insight and trust. We look forward to seeing how these ideas evolve!

UPDATE: Applications now closed
Thanks so much for your interest. We have now received sufficient applications for this Makeathon and are no longer accepting any more.

Join us for a hands-on Makeathon where we’ll co-design and prototype sensory dog vests for students with diverse learning needs.

Dates: Saturdays – Nov 8, Nov 22 & Dec 6, 2025
Times: 9.30am – 2.30pm
Location: Our offices 8 min walk from East Richmond train station 

We’re teaming up with Canine Comprehension, an organisation that brings therapy dogs into schools to support student wellbeing, emotional regulation, and engagement. These custom-made dog coats will support fine motor development and emotional regulation through interactive elements like zips, buttons, textures, and more. This Makeathon will include plenty of brainstorming, collaboration, prototyping, and hands-on making.

Key sessions:  

• Kick-off, discovery & design | Saturday November 8, 9.30am– 2.30pm   

• Prototyping, testing & development | Saturday November 22, 9.30am– 2.30pm   

• Making, finalising & wrap-up | Saturday December 6, 9.30am– 2.30pm   

Over the sessions participants will: 

• Explore and finalise vest designs  

• Adapt or recreate sewing patterns in three sizes (S, M, L) 

• Brainstorm and test different sensory elements 

• Sew and assemble the vests 

• Attach tactile and interactive features 

• Document the process to create open-source build instructions

Ideal for: sewers, crafters, learning specialists, educators, makers, and anyone who love good doggies. 

🐾 Therapy dogs may be visiting too! 

Applications are closed
Wow, what a response! We’re full now and can’t accept more applications. Want to hear about the next Makeathon?
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In 2025, TOM Melbourne collaborated with the Monash University Service Design Studio, a unique interdisciplinary course that brings together Industrial Design and Master of Architecture students. This studio focused on applying design thinking and processes to improve systems and services, working closely with MediStays — a provider that connects people with disabilities and hospital patients to accessible accommodation tailored to their needs.

The challenge arose from recent legislative changes to NDIS-funded short-term accommodation (respite) stays. Under the new rules, family members could no longer stay alongside individuals accessing these services, meaning many were facing independent stays for the first time. The students’ brief was to reimagine and improve the experience around booking, checking in, and staying, specifically for people with disabilities using the MediStays service.

Over the semester, the students researched user needs, mapped the current service journey, and generated design solutions aimed at making the entire accommodation process more accessible, efficient, and user-friendly. The project also emphasized open-source principles, with the goal of sharing the resulting designs publicly so that other hotels and accommodation providers could adopt and improve accessibility practices beyond MediStays.

This collaboration marked TOM’s first engagement with a service design course tackling systemic challenges in disability accommodation. The partnership yielded promising concepts and highlighted the potential for design to create meaningful impact not just on individual tools, but on the wider service systems affecting people with disabilities.