In our modern society, with its digital shortcuts and frenetic pace, we gather together less and less.

At the same time, we feel depleted, lost,
soul-sick and heart-tired.

We believe soulful and joyful gatherings fuel our connection with one another, giving us a deeper sense of meaning about our place in the world. 

We are highly specialized experience designers who build bespoke gatherings around a theme presented through provocations.

Our flagship Joyous Rebellion dinner follows an exciting format around an evocative question that kicks off an evening of exploration and creation.

Joyous Rebellion is not an event planning company.

We take a unique and narrative-forward approach to working with clients, aligning with your brand ethos, as an opportunity for guests to deepen their own humanity and connect to your brand in a truly meaningful and memorable way.

We are artists, designers and provocateurs who believe that experiencing joy is an act of rebellion.

  • Jahan is a born and raised New Yorker and loves sharing that fact…even when no one else cares! She’s never not reading two to four books simultaneously, summer is her favorite season, and as her younger sister tells her, she suffers from “eldest daughter syndrome” (if you know, you know). Nourishing conversations and good food makes her come alive. 

    Professionally, Jahan has over twenty years experience in narrative design, program design, content creation, facilitation and curation, Jahan Mantin is the Co-founder of Joyous Rebellion a creative company that designs bespoke, intimate gatherings that nourish the soul. 

    Prior to Joyous Rebellion, Jahan was the co-founder of Project Inkblot a consultancy partnering with tech and media companies (past clients include: Shopify, Kickstarter, Comcast, Anomaly Advertising) to build equitable products and services using their proprietary framework, Inkblot Design™(ID). Jahan has created and led hundreds of virtual and IRL programs on equity, design and technology. An accomplished speaker, Jahan has led keynote addresses at design conferences and been featured on podcasts from Design Better to Tech Wrap Queen. She is a former adjunct professor at NYU where she co-created and co-taught Intro to Design for Diversity™ to graduate students.

    Past work has included leading a number of high profile campaigns, including a women-driven initiative focused on low-income, immigrant, and women of color entrepreneurs for the City of New York as well as a long career in publishing – as an advertising executive  at Time Out New York magazine and as a Senior Editor for the music and culture magazine, Beyond Race – in addition to co-founding an arts and social impact online publication.

    Jahan earned her B.A. in Communications and Culture from Clark University and is the recipient of the Kate Spade and Company Fellowship as a former member of The New Museum Incubator, NEW INC. a cultural incubator dedicated to supporting innovation, collaboration, and entrepreneurship across art, design, and technology. She is also a certified yoga instructor and an avid traveler, having lived in such locations as Colombia and Scotland. She currently resides in Brooklyn.

  • Boyuan’s career trajectory has been a bit adventurous, disparate, maybe even a bit rebellious. After landing in Brooklyn, NY straight out of college–as a wide-eyed and bushy tailed country kid from Western MA, now in the big city–she landed her first job as a floral wholesaler servicing funerals and churches. So began her foray into interacting with hyperspecific cultural enclaves that whet her appetite like a little Chinese Dora The Explorer, uncovering a desire to learn more about the hidden crevices and interesting communities hidden-in-plain-sight in our vast world. Following this path, Boyuan had stints in youth development, environmental education, criminal justice, music journalism, corporate marketing, and cultural programming. Through all of these interesting people, places and things in between, Boyuan’s real skillset as a designer coalesced. It’s in her ability to see the high overarching narrative, and the small barely-noticable spaces in between, that Boyuan has been able to use these patterns and valuable data to design spaces, things and concepts that have yet to be named, and are socially responsive and relevant to our current times.

    In the past two decades, Boyuan has contributed writing to international publications, programmed city-wide initiatives, spoken on stages across the country to business, art and design audiences, and has co-founded a number of cultural platforms and businesses. She and her co-founder, Jahan Mantin, have had their body of work, Inkblot Design® (merging design thinking and equity) from their former company, Project Inkblot, used by dozens of tech, media and advertising companies, including many Fortune 500s.

    She now uses her special powers to create profound and moving experiences between humans through leading joyous rebellions. In a world that feels more frenetic and daunting everyday, these experiences can feel like a snap of the fingers from a bad spell, and bring folks back to themselves, and their innate and intuitive abilities as creators in a world worth living.

    Boyuan is a first generation Chinese-American, and lives in a former toilet paper mill in the woods.