The Sandwishes office can be found on a back alley in the Tam­sui District of New Tai­pei City. It resembles off-campus student housing. They joke that the 165-square-meter space is a mansion. Though they are far from the center of Tai­pei, their rent is low and they can use the space as both their office and their residence, so it’s a good deal.

Sandwishes have designed various products for the Happy Mount Home, such as cookies and cards.

The main members of Sandwishes are Xie Ruo­lin, 29; Li Wan­keng, 30; and Ceng Yun­jie, 35.

Two years ago, Li and Ceng were students in an interdisciplinary graduate program at Taipei National University of Arts (TNUA) and they took a class on multidisciplinary art projects. The instructor, Professor Chen Kai-­huang, brought them to the Happy Mount Home to explore the possibilities of connections between the arts and special education.

For the entire semester, the students actively participated in activities at the home. At the end of the term, they transformed what they had learned into creative work.

Working with the home’s music therapy teacher to grasp the key concepts of “breaking apart” and “transforming,” Li created a work of installation art entitled Happy Mount’s Mobile Team. It demonstrates how disabled people, in learning basic life skills such as brushing their teeth, getting out of bed, drinking and eating, need to have their teachers break down processes into very small steps if they are to learn them. For instance, the process of drinking from a glass of water is broken down into grasping the glass, raising it, bringing it to the lips and actually drinking.

Ceng had a realization about the key words of “connections” and “communication,” which she displayed in the performance art piece Happy Mount Drink. She took herbs gathered on the expansive grounds of the home and made a drink out of them, inviting members of the audience, who came from the world ­outside, to consume it. She thus established connections between the general public and the home, which is usually at a remove from the outside world.

Happy with their experiences at Happy Mount, Li and Ceng stayed connected to the home as volunteers after the class ended, and they even invited other students from their program, including Xie, to join them. Angela Yao, Happy Mount’s director, was delighted and provided a design fee for the students to create a large defining signpost-like installation for the home, as well as promotional postcards and wrapping paper.

The three volunteers applied what they had learned at art school, breaking down the paintings by the disabled children in the home to serve as small graphic elements, and then building them up again into various designs. Their work garnered much praise. The large giraffe signpost in particular won the admiration of the home’s children. It started a craze among them for drawing giraffes.

“Able both to show our talents and earn some income, we very much enjoyed the experience!” Xie says that the three of them began to wonder if they could establish a creative studio that specialized in designing products, holding exhibitions and creating promotional materials for organizations that served the disabled, with a focus on integrating Ceng’s words “connections” and “communication” into their products.

Taking “connections” and “communications” as its key words, Ceng Yunjie’s work Happy Mount Drink emphasizes the therapeutic nature of art.

They joined TNUA’s KD Art Culture Industry Innovation Incubation Center, hoping to find some venture capital. In 2012, they passed the first round of assessments for the MOE’s U-Start program, which brought them NT$350,000. At the end of the year, they formally founded the company and opened for business. During the second round of U-Start assessments in early 2013, they walked away with the top prize for cultural and creative enterprises, winning NT$600,000. That served as the seed money for the company.

When the news broke, the KD Incubation Center and the Happy Mount Home were ecstatic, but the Sandwishes themselves remained calm and collected and continued to create special education teaching aids. This winter, Pizza Time, which they developed with the teachers and residents at the home, is going to hit the market.

Taking the form of a board game, Pizza Time uses magnets and metal plates to help the mentally disabled gain a greater command of shapes and colors, as well as improve their social skills. In the game, the teacher stands in the corner of the classroom and pretends to make a phone call to order a pizza: “Hello. I want a ham and tomato pizza with extra basil but no green pepper. I’ll pick it up at the pizza parlor in five minutes.”

On hearing this, the students busily start finding images of ham, tomatoes and basil to spread over a pizza, while making sure they’ve eliminated any images of green pepper. Five minutes later the teacher comes around to check their work. The game allows for the students to make their own rules and change the characters, so they never tire of it.

His personal involvement in art therapy has enabled ­Sandwishes volunteer Li Wan­keng to truly understand the needs of students with learning ­disabilities.

The Sandwishes Studio was incorporated by Xie, who graduated last year. Li graduated this year, and Ceng will finish her thesis and take her orals early next year. As the studio’s members gradually start working for it full time, Sandwishes will be able to take on more work. The company hopes to have monthly revenues of NT$100,000 by January of 2014, and then to double those after one year to NT$200,000.

“For a work of art, an expression of personal vision,” ­explains Xie, “demonstrating your own creative thinking is sufficient.” But creative enterprises put more emphasis on the ability to communicate ideals and transform conceptions.” The future is sure to offer great surprises beyond what anyone can imagine, and the Sandwishes are anxious to get started.