Happy Power at BottleDream’s Social Innovation Festival

echofline
Jul 1
8 min read

I. Project Origins & Context

About the BottleDream Social Innovation Festival

BottleDream is a social-innovation platform devoted to sparking young people’s creative impact and is a certified B Corp. Since 2016, it has staged an annual Social Innovation Festival—one of China’s most influential events of its kind—bringing together hundreds of changemakers from government, brands, NGOs, youth networks and rural communities. The festival serves as a youth co-creation arena that fuses topic co-design, content releases, cross-sector partnerships and public experiments.

The 2024 edition drew 100+ project initiators, 1,000+ participants and countless onlookers. On-site programming spanned keynote speeches, a creative marketplace, installation exhibits, hands-on workshops and performance parties. It is both a real-world space where ideas collide and a collective dress rehearsal for the future society we imagine.

Why set up a “pop-up Happy Power installation” here?

At a festival that calls on us to co-create a more sustainable and inclusive future, Happy Power responded with a playable, power-generating, interactive installation that sparks conversation around the idea that bodily action can be tomorrow’s energy. It tackles three core questions:

Can the heavy topics of social innovation be gamified, releasing “light yet real kinetic energy” from weighty issues?
Might our future public spaces become temporary gathering spots—flexible, connective “energy nodes” born of co-creation?
How can a single leap, a moment of street play, help people feel our shared bonds, sense the climate’s pulse, and glimpse the possibility of change—through joy?

This pop-up is not a display piece; it is an invitation to co-create. It’s a springboard that turns social innovation from mere words into participatory action—from an elite consensus into a public game.

II. Design Concept

1. Pop-Up Kinetic-Energy Installation: Portable × Modular × Social-Magnet Generator

For a social-innovation festival hosting 1,000-plus visitors, Happy Power created an “action-activated” energy node guided by three design principles:

Portability & rapid deployment
Built from modular components, the structure can be assembled or dismantled by a small crew in minutes, adapting to a variety of sites and traffic flows.
Action equals energy
Integrated harvesters convert every playful interaction into usable power as participants “play to generate.”
Social-magnet generator
Each motion triggers visible feedback—lights, spins, lifts—attracting onlookers, inviting them to join in, and sparking new connections.

More than just an installation, it is a collective power plant—a mobile prototype of the public space of the future.

2. Answering “What Is Social Innovation?” in the Language of Play

“What is social innovation?”—a question that slips easily into reports yet is hard to feel in everyday life.

Happy Power chooses to answer with the body:

We believe energy doesn’t flow only from the grid; it also comes from every intentional human action. Change isn’t born solely of elite decisions; it can begin with the arc of a single swing.

We turned that belief into two tangible devices—the first is:

【Power-Generating · Butterfly Swing】

Come have a go!

Take off with an adult’s strength, land with a child’s delight.

Carve a perfect arc through play and create joyful electricity in flight.

When this butterfly flaps its wings, it won’t set off a tornado in distant Texas—

but linked together, it might just stir a more sustainable energy future.

This is a swing that turns motion into power. Each time you soar, wind rushes past your ears and the mechanical wings overhead beat in unison—while quietly charging your phone. A hidden battery pack atop the frame stores enough energy for five full phone charges.

Power principle: The swing acts as a giant pendulum, driving a concealed ratchet–gear system that spins a generator. It outputs a steady 5 V / 2 A DC current, perfect for small devices.
Social feedback: Ideal for introverts who like solo play, every flutter of the “butterfly wings” proclaims: one person’s effort can shake the energy imagination of tomorrow.

【Power-Generating · Bicycle Spin Disk】

Riders, ready for a pedal-powered chase?

By the time you circle back to where you started—again, and again—you’ll have quietly pumped out plenty of clean electricity.

The Earth turns, the carousel whirls; they say history’s wheel goes round and round in endless loops.

Happy Power turns that same circular motion into the force that breaks old cycles.

When play becomes real green energy, every burst of laughter becomes power to change the world.

This installation fuses multi-player teamwork, kinetic energy generation and light feedback. Participants pedal side-by-side bicycles that spin the entire floor disk while igniting overhead light boards and streaming LEDs.

Power principle: Linked bicycle cranks drive an axle system that rotates the platform and spins a generator. The output runs the surrounding light strips and offers USB ports for charging phones and other small devices.
Interaction: High on cooperation—perfect for teaming up with strangers. The faster you ride, the more brilliant the light show, creating a shared rush of collective joy.

III. On-Site Play & Interaction Mechanics

1. How We Draw People In

We don’t rely on loudspeakers or scripted hosts—the installation itself is the invitation to act.

Live power feedback
One swoop of the swing and the lights flare; one spin of the disk and the wings beat. This instant “energy-for-action” loop catches every curious eye.
Movement made visible
Unlike static Instagram backdrops, our gear demands motion. Watching others play sparks the irresistible urge to give it a try.
Built-in social call
Each device reaches peak performance only when two or more people cooperate, naturally prompting friends, strangers, kids, and adults to team up.

We don’t direct participation; we ignite an instinctive desire to join.

2. Who Joined the Interaction

Over the festival’s two days we witnessed an “energy alliance” that transcended age and identity:

Young changemakers Many social innovators from all over the country poured in between workshops to “generate happiness together,” exchanging big dreams while they played.
Urban & rural brand owners Negotiations over products happened mid-pedal, turning the marketplace into a new form of kinetic networking.
Children & families Parents, urged on by their kids, jumped into the action; the children loved queueing under the swing to figure out how to make the wings flap even wider.
Seniors & passers-by Retirees showed up each morning for a “power-workout,” filming joyful videos in the rain.

In this space, people from every background formed momentary alliances around a single installation—exactly the lived expression of “social innovation” we aim for.

3. Unexpected Surprises & Second-Wave Creativity

Plenty of interactions bloomed far beyond what we’d imagined:

Impromptu “power contests.” A group of kids got hooked and, using festival stickers as prizes, organised races for the fastest pedaller and the highest swinger.
Toys on board. Visitors brought their plush dolls along to ride the bikes and swing, snapping photos as if the toys were fellow “power generators.”
Viral social-media moments. The swing’s wings and the glowing spin disk at night turned into selfie hotspots; dozens of posts tagged #HappyPower spread the idea of kinetic, joy-fuelled energy.

We supplied no script, yet everyone rewrote the space as a piece of collective performance art.

IV. Social Interaction & Feedback

1. Informal Data Snapshot (Estimates & Behavioural Indicators)

Although the pop-up lacked precise traffic counters and power meters, on-site observation and rotating team logs give us a rough picture:

1000+ play sessions on the swing and spin disk over two days, with many repeat users.
Combined output roughly enough to fully charge 300 smartphones.
More than half of all interactions involved two or more people, underscoring the installation’s social nature.
Peak activity ran from 3 p.m. to 9 p.m., making the area one of the festival’s hottest spots.

These tiny acts of “off-grid yet power-filled” play became one of the festival’s most vibrant social-energy nodes.

2. Observed Interaction Scenarios

Throughout the pop-up we witnessed countless unscripted, naturally arising social exchanges—the installation truly became a “social magnet”:

Strangers collaborating – Two visitors who had never met paired up on the spin disk, pedalling harder to make it whirl faster while chatting and swapping stories; the vibe was lively and relaxed.
Parent-child play – Prompted by their kids, parents jumped onto the swing or ran round the disk hand-in-hand, creating some of the festival’s warmest inter-generational moments.
Toys in on the action – Many attendees brought beloved plushies, placing them on the swing or disk so they could “play” too—fueling the charming fantasy of “my toy and I generating power for the planet.”
Team speed challenges – Groups of children self-organised races to “light up the signboard as fast as possible,” with onlookers cheering like an impromptu mini-sports meet.

None of these behaviours were part of our original brief, yet this very spontaneity turned “power generation” into a fresh point of connection in the public realm.

3. Feedback from Social Innovators

Many of the invited social innovators at the festival said that the Happy Power installation offered “a starting point for social connection that requires no words—just shared action.”

“This setup is brilliant. It doesn’t preach—it speaks through the body. The moment people move, they start collaborating.” — Youth-organization operator

“We pour so much effort into connecting people through content, yet you linked strangers instantly with a single spinning disk.” — Founder of a public-interest brand

Several participants suggested bringing installations like this into more community spaces as an “interactive icebreaker for tough topics.”

4. Media & Social-Platform Buzz (Despite No Formal Tracking)

Even without a dedicated comms strategy, the installation spread organically across multiple social channels:

User posts – Numerous visitors shared photos and videos of the Happy Power gear on Weibo, Xiaohongshu and WeChat Moments, tagging #行为能源 (KineticEnergy), #瓶行宇宙社创节 (BottleDream SIF) and #游乐能HappyPower.
Viral clip – One short video topped 1,000+ likes on the day of the festival, ranking among the event’s most-viewed pieces of user-generated content.
Podcast shout-outs – Several attendees referenced “that power-generating interactive installation” in podcasts and interviews, calling it a festival highlight.

No one steered the narrative, yet the installation’s striking visuals and hands-on appeal triggered an innate urge to share, underscoring the viral potential of highly interactive content.

V. Experimental Significance & Future Potential

This pop-up experiment at the BottleDream Social Innovation Festival was more than a test-run of Happy Power inside a large public event; it showed us that festivals themselves are natural high-grounds of energy and emotion, perfect for sparking public participation and social connection. Happy Power is designed precisely for such temporary, high-frequency interaction zones—acting as a “social energy device.”

During the trial we validated several key hypotheses:

In festival settings people prefer to engage with public issues through play, rather than through traditional preaching or static displays.
A mobile, interactive, power-generating installation carries innate social magnetism—it energises the physical space and forges new bonds among strangers.
Such pop-up “energy fields” have the potential to evolve into an entirely new kind of public space:
- a festival-grade energy zone, or
- a mobile community energy-activation unit.

Next steps we are exploring

Package the installation as a “festival solution”—a service for exhibitions, music events and charity actions focused on social issues.
Develop a “mobile energy-space toolkit,” combining modular hardware, interaction mechanics and social-play design patterns, so more organisations can build their own energy fields.
Link “social games” with an “energy-points” system, so that generating power not only lights bulbs but also unlocks real-world rewards or community quests, pushing the boundaries of “behavioural economy” in public space.

We believe play itself is a low-threshold, high-intensity form of civic engagement. Once play can generate electricity, and that electricity yields tangible value, people will effortlessly gain a new understanding of public space, climate action and communal belonging.