Being in a place

Workshop on investigating (personal) relationships with place

Hybrid workshop beginning online Saturday 17 April, 17.00 and ending Saturday 24 April 10.30-12.30 at De Kloosterbos, Eindhoven

The workshop “Being in a place” offers a site-based practice to investigate one’s relationship with a place and strives to expand our collective understanding of how we relate to our environments in general. Each participant chooses an outdoor space close to their daily life – a place one likes to go, spend time at, that is close to your home and that you would call ‘nature’, ‘landscape’ or ‘garden’. Through a series of short exercises, executed individually within a one week time period, we will dive deeper into our ways of being in a particular place. 

The exercises are designed to question and deepen our understanding of ‘inhabiting landscape’ - a long-term research subject of the workshop host Anna Maria Fink - and are inspired by the activities of walking, playing, collecting and caring. Every participant will keep an individual diary where we collect our findings. During the final workshop planned to be hosted at a local community garden* we will share and examine these findings through the creation of a collective exhibition.

This workshop is for everyone and anyone with an interest in getting to know more about their local surroundings and their ideas on how to relate to our diverse environments. This workshop is particularly suited to those able to dedicate time to an exercise of up to half an hour per day over a period of one week.**

Event outline:

On Saturday 17th April we will group together for a short online introductory meeting in order to get to know each other and the exercises. Each participant will receive 5 short exercises to carry out the following days at their selected location. During the week you will also receive some impulses for thinking about places to stimulate your experiences and observations. If the current COVID19-measures do not allow for our physical gathering we will meet online also for our final workshop and create the collective exhibition also online.

On Saturday 24th April we will meet physically at a community garden in Eindhoven where we will share all of our findings in a collective exhibition.

About the facilitator:

Anna Maria Fink (1987, AT) is a designer, researcher and teacher that works with notions of landscape. Her studio Atelier Fischbach unravels people's connection with their environments through small scale spatial interventions as well as experimental practices and publications. For more information take a look at: www.annafink.eu

*All Meeting Grounds events take place in accordance with RIVM rules at the time of the event. If we are not able to physically meet at the given date, the workshop will be moved online. 

**Please note that not all exercises have to take place on a specific day, you can alter the timetable to suit your needs and availability

Places for this workshop are limited so please secure a spot by RSVPing to amy@onomatopee.net

Online event link

Noticing Acts

(Story telling for surviving well in times of climate crisis)

A two-part hybrid workshop taking place:

Thursday April 8, 17.00h

Sunday April 25, 12.30-14.30

*Participation at both workshops is not necessary but is encouraged.

Places are limited so please rsvp to amy@onomatopee.net

Noticing Acts invites you to join in a hybrid online and offline event dedicated to the practice of collective story-telling with(in) community gardens. Through our shared narratives we will explore the garden as both a literal and imaginary space for establishing stronger environmental identities. The event is aimed at those who are enticed by the desire to change our climate narrative, and who have an interest in the practical ways we can practice the commons and in effect build stronger environmental identities.  

Noticing Acts will take the form of a two part workshop.  

In the first part of the workshop we will meet online on Thursday April 8, 2021.  

In the second part of the workshop we will meet in Eindhoven at our chosen community garden. 

ACT I

During the online workshop, workshop attendees will share stories of their relations to the environment. The event will begin with a listening activity and somatic ritual. Then we will all engage in a free writing prompt: In our garden I will grow...  

In the second part of the online activity we will share the stories written and through our collective narratives we will create a virtual garden, based on our imagined narratives.

ACT II

For the offline activity participants are invited to the community garden. Here participants will be guided through a series of Instructions for Noticing rendered as various activities to engage in whilst in the garden. After the investigation, participants are invited back to the meeting point where they will engage in adding their findings to the map of the virtual garden from Act I.

About the facilitator:

Amy Pekal ( b.1993, New York) examines how dominant ideologies shape western culture’s understanding of the natural world.  Informed by intersectional feminism, she creates propositions, environments, and situations that decolonize the dominant dualisms between nature and culture to imagine and enact ways of working across difference, human, more-than-human, and otherwise. 

This workshop will take place in April when we hope physical meet-ups will be permitted, place will however be limited therefore a reservation is necessary. To participate at one or both workshops please RSVP to amy@onomatopee.net 

Online workshop event link

Thursday 1 April, 17.00

Online workshop

Our current political systems are often viewed as complex or lacking in accessibility. Yet the essence of politics is simply to collectively manage resources and to - within conflicting ideas - find common grounds and create policy around them. An excellent example of a simplified political system is the community garden. In the community garden people gather together to take care of and distribute one or more resources. In this 1 hour workshop the community garden is taken as a tool to rethink and debate our current political systems. 

Through this workshop you will build, through debate and different tasks, your ideal “virtual” community garden and define how it is managed, by considering questions such as:

What would your garden look like? Would one person take ownership over it? Would it be led collectively? Would it work with rotation systems? Would it need a voting system? 

The workshop follows tasks surrounding the following subjects: 

1) Defining boundaries; 

2) Fitting rules to local circumstances;

3) (Collective) Decision making;

4) Monitoring;

5) Graduated sanctions;

6) Forms for conflict resolution

(Ostrom, 1990). 

The workshop will take place in the virtual realm and the aim is to combine the knowledge and views of a diverse range of people and to demonstrate the value of collectively building systems through different expertises and perspectives. 

Don’t hesitate that a lack of knowledge in the political field will hold you back, it is rather the contrary. Everyone and anyone who is interested is a warmly welcomed addition.

About the facilitator: 

Noor Bootsma graduated from the Design Academy in Eindhoven and currently follows a master of European and International Governance at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. Her interests lie in connecting people with different expertises and perspectives to rethink policies and systems.

RSVP is necessary for this workshop. Please contact amy@onomatopee.net to reserve a place

Event link

Human and non-human students from the Rietveld Garden Department will present their project live from their garden classroom. They will discuss how the garden began and slowly evolved over time. Touching upon issues such as Utopia, future pedagogy, social engagement, public art, post-covid academia, student-led learning and the production of space. 

This 60 minute digital conversation will include a short workshop interlude, plus invited guests.

About the facilitators:

The Garden Department is an outdoor classroom and garden at the Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam

Please RSVP to this event by emailing amy@onomatopee.net

Event link