In June 2026, Ichigo Bloom facilitated a Biodiversity Collage workshop for Parfums Christian Dior Japon, as part of their annual Engagement Week. For the first time, we combined the workshop with hands-on urban farming activities on a rooftop in the heart of Tokyo, a format we’re now making available to other organizations.
A maison with roots in the natural world
Parfums Christian Dior is one of the world’s leading luxury fragrance and cosmetics houses. What is perhaps less known is how central the natural world has always been to the identity of the house. Christian Dior himself described the craftspeople of his atelier as “bees” and the maison as a “hive.” The house maintains 24 gardens dedicated to the exceptional raw materials at the heart of its fragrances and skincare, and has set science-based targets to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions across all scopes.
Its annual Engagement Week is one of the moments when that commitment is brought to life through team learning and experience. This year’s theme was gardens, nature, and biodiversity.
The Biodiversity Collage
The Biodiversity Collage is a collaborative, card-based workshop developed in France and now facilitated in dozens of countries. Like the Climate Fresk, it is grounded in scientific consensus, drawing on IPBES reports, and designed to be run in small groups of 4 to 7 participants, who work together to build a shared understanding of how ecosystems function, what biodiversity loss means, and how it connects to the way we live and work. The session is not a lecture. It is a collective construction. Each group assembles a picture of the living world from the cards in front of them, and the conversation that follows tends to go further than anyone expected.
For the Dior Engagement Week, we facilitated five groups of eight participants, in Japanese and in English, on the rooftop of Art Farm Ikejiri in Setagaya.
A rooftop that grows things
Art Farm Ikejiri occupies the rooftop of HOME/WORK VILLAGE in Ikejiri, Setagaya, a short train ride from central Tokyo. It is a working urban farm: vegetables, grapes, flowers, and herbs grow in planters across the roof, alongside an apiary tended in partnership with Beeslow, a Tokyo-based urban beekeeping initiative. The farm runs workshops, events, and membership programs built around the idea that people can reconnect with natural cycles even in the middle of a city.
It was the right place to spend a morning thinking about biodiversity.
From cards to soil
After the Biodiversity Collage, participants rotated through three hands-on stations run by Art Farm Ikejiri and Beeslow:
Herb harvesting: picking herbs from the rooftop garden and making a fresh herbal tea, with an introduction to urban agriculture, mixed planting, and the relationship between plant diversity and ecosystem resilience.
Beekeeping observation: guided observation of the apiary with Beeslow, exploring the role of pollinators in ecosystems, in food systems, and in the urban environment.
Composting: a hands-on introduction to composting and the principles of circular urban ecology: how food waste becomes soil, and how soil connects to everything else participants had been discussing through the morning.
The three activities were not designed as a break from the workshop. They were its continuation, each one a living example of the concepts the groups had just worked through together.
What participants said
Most participants reported a significantly improved understanding of biodiversity, and a majority said their motivation to engage with sustainability issues had increased.
A few comments stood out:
“It was a wonderful learning experience. Actually touching nature made me feel grateful for all living things and for food. I usually spend my days in front of a computer, so being in the greenery and nature felt genuinely refreshing.”
“The hands-on activities and the open atmosphere created by the facilitators made learning genuinely enjoyable. I’ve already recommended composting to my family. I think it’s important to keep changing our awareness, little by little, in a way that’s fun and sustainable.”
A format we’re building on
This was the first time we combined the Biodiversity Collage with a hands-on partner activity in this way: a half-day that moves from collaborative learning to physical experience, all within the same theme. We are now developing this as a replicable format available to other organizations. If your company is looking for a half-day engagement program that goes beyond a standard workshop, one that connects environmental learning to tangible, sensory experience in Tokyo, this is it. Visit our Learn&Do: Urban Nature page to find out more, or get in touch to discuss what we can put together for your team.
Thank you
A sincere thank you to Parfums Christian Dior Japon for the trust and for the spirit of openness their team brought to the day. To Art Farm Ikejiri for building something genuinely alive on that rooftop, and to Beeslow for the beekeeping session and for the reminder, in the middle of Tokyo, of how much depends on something as small as a bee.
