Play
Play is where humans find rest — a place to explore, try things, and see what happens. It’s where we learn, build, and follow ideas without needing a clear outcome. It is part of how we grow.
Creativity has been a driving force in my life. It is the way I learn best: start a project, have fun, succeed or not, and learn something along the way.
It usually starts with a simple thought: This could be fun — I want to do this... Then I figure it out. That process — learning by doing — is play for me.
Over time, that curiosity has taken many forms. I've directed films, made animation, written dance theatre, published children's books, carved spoons, built an online course platform, explored AI-assisted art, co-created a podcast with more than 150 episodes, and I keep starting new book projects.
Across all of it, the same pattern repeats: getting an idea, seeing if I can — and learning by doing.
From play to profession
I am so grateful that play has turned into a profession. After high school, I took 6 gap years where I explored filmmaking. During that period, I kind of stumbled into a career in the online media world, where I became the editor-in-chief of Denmark's largest Online Youth Magazine. This has led to many fun experiences and playful days, some would call it work, but when your office time is spent with the biggest Danish stand-up comics, then going to work is quite fun - Today I can look back at it and think - Oh that was stupid, but fun - like the book I wrote for the Danish Radio Program Monkey Business - a book about the slang used at the Danish hot-dog shops.
I try to keep the play alive in my work. There is this saying: Fail fast - learn fast - and it needs to be done with a playful mind. Where ideas are tested, and if they do not work, then on with the next one.
When it is work, it is off course, not true play, as there is an outcome in mind. But I try to keep the playfulness alive in the process - and focus more on having fun along the way than the goal.
But then again. We still need to make things that are relevant for others :)
I have this saying: I have never finished a project I didn’t start.
This short sentence kind of shares my view on life - you need to start. Dream, have fun, but - oh my - just start. I have indeed started a lot of projects that I never finished - and have had many dreams that never went anywhere - but starting - This is where the magic is. To start is to go from dreaming to planning. You set a date and start the process. Dreams are always in the future until you start.
Below you can see some of the projects I finished and some I just started on.
Amateur Feature Film at 16 years old
When I was 16, I directed my first film — an amateur adaptation of Danish author Dennis Jürgensen's book "Jord i Hovedet". I produced it all myself and was responsible for a film crew of 20 people, and we ended up with a movie that ran 1 hour and 18 minutes. It was screened at the local Cinema where I grew up.
It was this experience that made me dream of becoming a film director. That dream took me to the European Film College, where I discovered animation and made the short film Toilet Life. But over time, I realised it wasn't film directing itself that drove me — it was the curiosity, the process of figuring things out, and the joy of making something from nothing. The camera was just one of many tools.
One day I will figure out to digitalize the old movie :)
Animation and imagining things is alive
In 1997, I made a short animation film about a toilet that falls in love with a mirror. The story takes place in a bathroom where the objects come alive when no one is watching. The man who owns the toilet keeps hearing strange sounds and thinks he's getting ill. A small tribute to love and the joy of being alive.
I love anthropomorphism — imagining objects as alive — and often walk around with a small grin, picturing the secret lives of things around me.
The film aired on Danish national television and screened at more than 15 film festivals worldwide, winning a couple of awards.
5 elements of hiphop and dance theater
In 1998, I met dancer and choreographer Steen Koerner and his crew, Out of Control. It became the start of a creative collaboration built on the original spirit of hip hop — combining disciplines into something greater. Together we made a documentary in New York, wrote one of the first dance theatre pieces merging street dance with theatre, and later published the street art book Gadens Hårdeste Hævn, opened by Denmark's Minister of Culture.
Growing up with hip hop taught me to think holistically — across the visual, the body, the word, and the rhythm. That mindset has shaped how I approach creativity.
Slang and hotdogs
My very first book published is something as silly as a book about hot dog stand slang. I wrote it for the Danish National Television Station in 2004 while I was working as a web editor on the radio show Monkey Business.
A fun assignment, where I explored the history of the hot dog stand and all the slang expressions. But also really really stupid :)
Storytelling for children
I started telling stories for our children on a 100-day road trip back in 2012. One thing led to another, and I ended up telling stories at the local library. Two of the stories were recorded live in front of an audience and published by Lindhardt og Ringhof, a Danish publishing house.
The stories follow Albert, an inventor pig, and his friends. In one, the town mayor asks Albert to build a copy machine to make 50 cardboard cutouts of himself for a local festival. The machine works too well — it produces 50 living, identical mayors instead. In the other, Albert fixes a broken pizza oven for the town's first pizzeria, but the oven comes alive.
Burps and 34 meters of Alphabet rhymes
Alfabøvset (Alphaburps) is 28 crazy, burping, happy and quirky letter-rhymes for children. For each letter, the Felumb Conrad family wrote a wild and quirky rhyme about a burping animal. Interpreted by Jørgen Eivind Hansen in a 34-metre-long painting, all the diverse creatures from the rhymes came to life in Fælledparken in March 2013 — part of the art project surrounding the construction of the Copenhagen Metro. The book collects photos from the painting alongside the original rhymes.
A handpan course platform
I love the sound of the handpan. I got my first handpan from a dear friend. Thank you, Søren A.
Then one day, walking in Barcelona, I saw a handpan shop, and we went in to talk with the owner. After our chat, I wrote to him that I had always wanted to take some courses online, and it could be fun to do it with the handpan. Ravid said yes, and it turned out that he had written 8 books on how to play the handpan. We have made the first four available on HandpanCourses.com
AI Assisted Art
I love sculptures, and I love to walk around and get ideas for sculptures. But it is not something I have found the time to fulfil, maybe one day I will learn to work with metal and stone. But for now, with AI, I have the tools to see my ideas come true. Not all the way true - but enough for me to see what my idea would look like.
I call it ConradPlusAI to be totally honest about the fact that the ideas under this name are co-created with AI.
The ideas are all mine, and I would love to see them in real life. So if you want to create one of my sculptures - please reach out to me - and let us make it happen
Luconomy - A Course on Money
Together with my wife Cecilie, I created Luconomy — a course about finding harmony in your relationship with money.
The course grew out of people asking us how we can afford to travel full-time, so we created this course to share our own journey from a conventional life with a house and mortgage in Copenhagen to living as full-time travellers with four children. That transition took us 14 years of figuring out how to align our spending with our values and make our income location-independent.
The course shares what we learned along the way — not quick fixes, but a way of thinking about money that leads to lasting change.
+150 podcast episodes
I was curious about the podcast medium and wanted to understand how it works in practice. Together with my wife, we created Self Directed — a guest-based podcast about life, learning, and raising free thinkers.
We record conversations with people working in education, parenting, psychology, and health — focused on how they approach their field and what their experience shows in practice. We have produced more than 150 episodes with guests including Peter Gray, Sugata Mitra, Gordon Neufeld, Sandra Dodd, Blake Boles, Deborah MacNamara, Michael Greger, Akilah S. Richards, and Michaeleen Doucleff, among others.
POOems
POOems is a book of poems about poo. It started because I find toilet humour genuinely funny — the kind of stupid that makes you giggle. So I started writing rhymes about mystery turds, elves playing darts with farts, art made from flatulence, and the desperate search for a loo that turns out to be someone's brand new shoe.
The poems are silly, loud, and meant to be read aloud. They are for children and for any adult who still finds poo funny. Which, let's be honest, is most of us.
The book is in the works.
Whittling Spoons
This is one of my latest joys — carving spoons. It is so restful, a great gift, and besides that, I really have a lot of fun forming the spoons, or as I call it, finding the spoon. The spoon reveals itself when I follow the grain of the wood, feel where the spoon is.
I have made more than 50 spoons and keep carving. And I almost only make spoons — they make me happy. Sometimes people ask me if I should try to carve a figure. I have tried. It is ok, but it doesn't make me happy. Carving spoons makes me happy. It is play for me.
Book projects on the way
I am working on a couple of different book projects. Two of them are centred around my wife's work. I am collecting quotes from the 24 podcast episodes she has done with Sandra Dodd and Sue Elvis into a dialogue book on unschooling. Another project is called Fragments, where I collect quotes, sentences and yes — fragments from all her writings into something new.
Then I am working on two of my own books. One is called When the Body Says Yes, and is a deep dive into how the body talks to us and gives us the gifts when we are living the good life. The other is centred around my work for fathers. It is called: Dad — Making Sense of Fatherhood Through the Lens of Attachment.
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