Building digital infrastructure that belongs

We tell about our progress, and share insights from the (S) Heroes journey in this blog. This article is written by KosmosKosmos. They joined Time for (S) Heroes in 2025 as the project's digital development partner.

When we joined Time for (S) Heroes as the team responsible for the website and signup infrastructure, we knew from the start that this wasn't a project where you just deliver a product and step back. The mission here, rethinking heroism through sustainable fashion, costume design, and installation art, demands that every part of the project, including its digital foundation, actually reflects what the project stands for.

That's how we approach development at KosmosKosmos anyway. But with (S) Heroes, the alignment runs deeper than process.

Parallel philosophies

The project brings together designers, artists, and creatives from across Europe to collaborate across disciplines. It's built on the idea that meaningful work happens when people share knowledge openly, work outside traditional silos, and build something together.

That's also how open source software works. The infrastructure behind timeforsheroes.eu is built entirely on open source tools, developed and maintained by communities who share code, solve problems together, and create technology that belongs to everyone. There's a strong European dimension to this movement: developers and organizations across the continent building alternatives to platform dependency, creating digital tools that remain independent, stable, and collectively owned.

When the project talks about sustainability and grassroots collaboration, we recognize the same spirit that drives the communities we build on.

What we built

Concretely, we developed the project's landing page and the backend systems that handle signups and registrations. The structure is designed to grow: as the portal opens and teams begin forming ahead of the Design Wave festival, the infrastructure needs to support that evolution without breaking or requiring rebuilds.

Working with the Xamk team and the partner organizations, we've tried to keep things flexible enough that content can flow in from different directions, different languages, different contexts, different organizational voices, while maintaining coherence. The website is a shared space, not a locked-down template.

Looking ahead

The portal launch is coming, and with it the open call that invites multidisciplinary teams to interpret sustainable heroism in their own ways. The digital platform will support team formation, mentoring connections, and eventually the pathway toward the Design Wave festival in Latvia and beyond.

We're glad to be part of a project where the technology isn't separate from the mission.

"The open source philosophy has always felt like a quiet form of idealism to me," says Martin Schiel, who led much of the development work on our end. "You contribute what you can, you build on what others have shared, and you trust that the work matters beyond your own use for it. When I read about how this project frames heroism, as something everyday, community-driven, not about individual glory, I thought: that's exactly it. That's how I already try to work. It was nice to feel like the values I bring to code actually belong somewhere."