"Nothing exists that does not touch something else."
Jeroen Brouwers
The value of life consists in the ability to connect with the other, with your environment, with time. In this there is a great role for listening. And listening is something we can learn, develop and practice. Can you listen in such a way that a whole person emerges? How do you put yourself in an Unknown Other, and discover connections we have among ourselves, even though we normally live alongside each other? Good listening is also: starting the conversation with yourself. And discovering a new perspective in yourself.
This afternoon we practice listening in four different forms:
- people-to-people dialogue: how to break patterns in the encounter and bring out the best in the other?
- the dialogue between human and non-human: how to find the connection to life, environment and time around you, beyond the usual words and concepts?
- the dialogue with yourself: can you get beyond the flow of thoughts and words in a sensory ritual and encounter a side of yourself that is usually hidden?
- intergenerational dialogue: how can we restore the broken connections between generations and what can we learn from indigenous wisdom and practices about this?
Agenda:
13:30 - 15:30 workshops
16:00 - 18:00 mini-symposium including Marianne de Koning (The Connection Room), Mercedes Zandwijken (Keti Koti tables), Laura Mentink, Inger van den Berg and Merlijn Twaalfhoven.
18:00 - 19:30 supper with Autumn Talk
Workshop: The art of listening and dialogue - by Inger van den Berg
How do you step up to a stranger with a brilliant question? There is an art to really listening and connecting with an unfamiliar other. Through imaginative work we will explore this in depth. We practice listening to each other and to strangers on the street. In this way we will search for a shared dreamed future. The workshop is part of the National Listening Campaign. You will learn how you can also set up a listening campaign in your own environment and bring people together.
Workshop: About Tomorrow - film and socratic conversation - by Finn van den IJssel
The relationship between us humans and the larger, living world is disturbed. Even when we talk about the climate crisis or the extinction of animals and plants, we like to keep it factual and rational. But what do we feel about it? Is there room to be confused, to feel uncertainty or sadness? What power lies in these so-called eco-emotions? And more importantly, how do we deal with them meaningfully together?
Based on the short film About Tomorrow, we will discuss this. The film paints a powerful picture of the emotional struggles that surface when young people are confronted with the climate crisis and explores how we deal with it differently. After the film, Finn will facilitate a socratic dialogue. During this conversation we will examine our eco-emotions and explore what role they can play in activism. You will get tools to, if you wish, lead an autumn conversation at your table during dinner.
Workshop: Time Loop - by Laura Mentink
In the world we have grown up in, short-term thinking seems more important than looking forward and back. What happens when we include our ancestors and future grandchildren in our current decisions? This Time Loop workshop will discuss current dilemmas from different perspectives in time. Can we stretch our sense of time, expand the time space in which we live and think? For example, how did they think about whether or not to close the borders 200 years ago, and how do they think about it in 2216?
Time Loop is inspired by the theory and practice of an indigenous community from the Great Lake District in Canada. They ensure that a relationship with the distant past helps us establish a relationship with the distant future as well.
Workshop Ritual: Time Journey & Drawing Reflection - by Nina Boas
Nina Boas, visual artist and theater maker from Amsterdam, invites you to a special journey through time, where ritual and reflection come together.
We begin with a walking reflection through your personal timeline, accompanied by the gentle sounds of a thumb harp. This journey will take you through your past, present and even the distant future, where you will enter into a dialogue with a descendant - a family member you yourself will never meet. What would you like to ask them? What wisdom and insights do they need from you to find their way? By dwelling on this conversation, you come into contact with new layers of self-knowledge and deeper connection.
After this walking introspection, we work with water, shape and color to communicate and express in a different way what words cannot always capture. A collective mind map emerges: a collective story, a shared ritual of connection and new perspectives.
Symposium: antidote to a divided society
with Marianne de Koning (The Connection Room), Mercedes Zandwijken (Keti Koti tables), Laura Mentink, Inger van den Berg and Merlijn Twaalfhoven.
How is it that society disintegrates into polarization, discord and discontent? How can we counter this and form a movement of connection and imagination throughout the Netherlands?
In this symposium, we will dive into the experience and approach of two notable and successful practices and share challenges, dilemmas and practical steps to strengthen togetherness in society. With the Keti Koti dialogue tables, Mercedes Zandwijken designed a ritual in which thousands of people have already engaged in a vulnerable conversation about inequality, color and fraught history. In De Verbindingskamer, Marianne de Koning makes contact with people who have become detached from social structures. In her very own way, she creates space in which the human power of encounter and cooperation is addressed.
Artists Laura Mentink, Nina Boas and Inger van de Berg show how, with and without words, they connect people in an area of feelings and vulnerability. Thus we explore the possibilities of collaboration between social and artistic work.
We also address your specific context and challenges as a participant.
