Current workshops explorations

Wild Stories Series

Special Formats

School without Walls

spatial storytelling within more-than-human worlds

commission-based ecological experiences for kids of all ages

School without Walls is a recurring intragenerational program by Foresta Kids, dedicated to ecologically, socially and personally sustainable futures. It’s an aesthetic research expedition that explores natural and cultural ecologies and lasts between 3 to 5 days. Unfolding in a direct relationship with the world around, the School invites to nurture perception and awareness beyond a reductionist view of nature, expanding sensitivity and ways of listening to the more-than-human world, through personal and collective storytelling, art thinking and making, as well as a process of larger-self-discovery, recognising intertwined relations as meaningful with intensity and nuance. During the journey participants create self-made books or other artefacts of personal meaning, as well as contribute to a collective publication >> Foresta Kids Ecologies Magazine.

What happens

Participants embark on the exploration journey as an aesthetic embodied research into subjects of their own interests within a theme offered by Foresta Collective for each School’s edition that has to do with contemporary ecologies humans inhabit. Supported by cultural and natural environments, the fun of the group process, artistic propositions and other interdisciplinary activities that try to involve participants’ physical, intellectual, emotional, and creative capacities, the School creates an environment where participants are invited to make their own learning journeys following personal inquiries. In this process participants’ ability to pay attention is expanding, they sharpen their focus on things that correspond to their organic inclinations, deepen their interests and learn to trust the effortless self. Our task as a team is to have confidence in human curiosity, to give impulses rather than answers, and to offer support when needed.

General themes we offer revolve around the manifold relationships between humans and nature. Potential questions to explore can be: How does nature live in cities? Are we nature? What would it be like to be a bird? The secret life of trees, what is it about? What is human nature? What is human impact on nature? How do we balance our existence with all the other creatures inhabiting this planet? Themes for aesthetic research can revolve around these hashtags: “food and nourishment”, "circularity and seasons", “climate and living environment”, "structure and freedom", “resonance and rhythms”, "movement and silence", "being alone and together", “senses and perception”, and others.

How it happens

Accompanied by a transdisciplinary team, participants develop their questions in relation to the proposed theme, reflect on their personal and shared experiences, interview local inhabitants, invent stories, visit an exhibition, observe, document, express, and engage into a variety of activities and propositions for exploration, engagement, creative thinking and making.

The mixture between artistic intervention, body-related exploration, handcrafted expression, theatrical enactment, aesthetic practices such as collecting, sketching, painting, printing, photographing, etc., as well as more scientific methods such as research, documentation, conservation, comparison, relating, etc. enable participants to understand and engage with their questions from a variety of perspectives. Thoughts, images, experiences, emotions and aesthetic impressions are collected by the participants and shaped into their personal research books or other artefact, as well as become part of a collective publication at the end.

Depending on the theme and the chosen space, the School wanders through the city, forest, or a country-side. Balancing between indoors and outdoors, nature and culture. If staying in a city the School takes place in a botanical garden, a museum, a library, a park, a kitchen, a bookshop, the streets, and other urban spaces that are not only connected with questions of content, but also facilitate unusual and unconventional work processes.

The artefacts that participants create during the journey vary, usually taking a form of a book, a sculpture, or an installation, based on participants’ subjects of inquiry. Collective practice, being at the core of Foresta Collective work, is also part of the School’s journey — at the end of every edition participants contribute to a common magazine (a mook: magazine+book) with insights into their work and insights, which they want to share with others, forming a collective publication.

Context

This project unfolds within the context of cultural mindset change towards, what we describe as, multi-layered sustainability, or deepening into the ecological worldview. It aims to be a nourishing soil for new narratives that nurture attentiveness, integrity and care as a mindset and a living practice. In this context we see a need for a different approach to education, one that supports human and ecological wellbeing. This series revolves around the questions of what is a more sustainable and meaningful approach to education and what kind of education is fitting for the 21st century that will help humans live well, as individuals and in a collective with others, humans and other species. Our understanding of sustainable education is continuously evolving, but could be currently described as:

• supporting people to develop a deeper awareness of the world around and within them

• nurturing broader perspectives and understandings of interconnections and varieties of life contexts (historical, geographical, natural, social, cultural) within both a local and a global outlook

• creating conditions for manifold flourishing of everyone

Sustainable education supports people in building character, nurturing spontaneous and interconnected sense of self, strengthening and developing qualities as:

• self-awareness and “literacy of the heart”

• empathy and collaborative mindset

• multiple intelligences and a more integrated being

• creative confidence and poetic capacities

• abilities to make informed decisions and adapt to changing life situations

• respectful togetherness with people different from oneself, as well as with the more-than-human inhabitants of the planet (eco-literacy)

• capacity to find one’s organic place in the world,

• in other words, flourishing within personal and relational ecologies

Education Mojo (as part of Woods in the City series) is our long-term research on change in educational paradigm.

Main features of this project

* Nomadic (workshops take place in diverse natural and cultural places, indoors and outdoors)

* Intragenerational (open for kids and their adults independently of age, it is only important that one is interested in joining and is able to make this decision themselves)

* Multilingual (we support multilingual environments, our working languages are: Deutsch, English, Español, Français, Русский )

* Phenomenon- and Context- based (disciplines are not separated — it’s not about art, or science, or learning how to sing. It’s about experiencing a chosen subject from a variety of perspectives within its organic context)

* Personal Research (learning is based on a personalised approach, self-directed inquiry and embodied culture)

* Rooted in Ecosystems Thinking (School without Walls grows from the core values of our work towards societal renewal)

Personal Museum Kids

commission-based museum experience as a MER (Museum for Ecological Restoration)

Personal Museum Kids is a playful experience designed for and with children, for a more joyful, attentive, interactive and meaningful time in museums, indoors or outdoors. It invites kids to engage with works of art through direct association with their own life rather than abstract concepts. Part of Personal Museum format.

Personal Museum Book

This experience is built around a simple book that we design for a specific museum, connecting art history and curiosity about a personal experience of the artworks of every child. We wish to inspire kids to approach the artworks closer, to sense and feel them, to let them reflect children’s own lives back to them. These books include a variety of exercises and games that encourage kids to look closer at the artworks, to sharpen their attention, to express their personal vision of things and draw something themselves, to work alone and with a partner, to play a movement game and to be still, and so on.

Exploring the Senses

In the world where we so often live in the digital and virtual, this module is about exploring sensory perception. Children spend a lot of time in front of the screens, and sometimes for hours a day they just use their eyes to gather information. The visual sense is very direct, it shows us “what is” and does not leave much room for the imagination. The sense of smell, touch, hearing, taste, allow us to perceive reality around on multiple levels, to develop attention and experience the world around through the integral relation of senses with each other, as well as experience how they are allied with the notions of the body, emotion and cultural memory. Looking at the paintings or sculpture or other artworks is only one part of the experience. What olfactory memories do artworks evoke in kids? Can they interpret artworks in smells? How about the sounds? Following a variety of warm-my-senses-up exercises, and depending on the subject, this module will focus on kids creating their own smells or sounds of the artworks.

Storytelling Journey

This module is designed as a game for attention, interaction, association, and creation. The entire experience can be for a group between 3 and 20 children, and lasts between 1 and 2 hours. There is an exhibition of participants’ improvised works at the end of each game. It creates a reflective space to increase self-awareness, to notice inner resonance with the artworks, to exchange with others. We develop an ability to notice and reflect upon our feelings and motivations without the immediate need to act upon them, as a real-life situation would require.

Woods in the City KIDS

commission-based collective practice lab for teens

WOODS IN THE CITY Kids is a laboratory for teens and youngsters who are interested in actively shaping their future. In this series we create a space for different possibilities and ways of learning, working and living, through impulses by inspiring guests, sharing values of sustainability and creativity, to inspire people to go their own way, even if it is unusual. We understand Woods as a free space for self-determination that is not predefined, a space for development that arises from the meetings between young people, impulses by contributors and practical dives, a space of possibilities. 

Certain works have a certain value for society. This value is mainly determined by media, education, family. But what would young people do if they were really free to decide what they want, without the expectations of society. At the same time, some of the future professions are not yet known to us. In a rapidly changing digital world, it is not clear today what new professions there will be in the future. 

By inviting various interdisciplinary guests to Woods in the City KIDS series, we want to introduce children and young people to different ways of being and acting in the world. Contributors give the participants an insight into their world, their perceptions and forms of expression. Kids can experience how different the paths to a fulfilled professional life can look like and be encouraged to follow the non-standard ways.

Past Workshops

Books of Forests

This workshop invites to explore the great outdoors and to find yourself as part of it. It aims to encourage children’s intuitive, experiential and holistic understanding of the natural environment, and to reinforce interrelationship of human and nature in the age of digital technologies. It also aims to remind that humans are part of nature, and invites to explore the metaphors of the inner forest. Children are naturally attentive to wonders, beauty and diversity of natural surroundings, as well as their own imagination and fantasy. The project aims to raise attention and care for nature, inner and outer. We explore relationships between forests around us and inside us, in a direct and a metaphorical way. And we make personal and collective books about findings on the way. This workshop is facilitated together with Foresta Artists.

Impressions from workshops at Botanical Garden Berlin-Pankow, Bode Museum, Naturkundemuseum Berlin, Helmholzplatz, M24, Schule an der Strauchwiese, Werkstatt, Young Arts Neukölln, and Spazio Corsivo. Participating Foresta Artists: Carolina Celas, Andrea Antinori, Violeta Lopiz. Photography: Foresta Collective

Water Worlds

The starting point for this project was a wish to explore water as a habitat, as a life form that is also a home to multitudes of life forms. Together with a group of children we pondered on contemporary questions and tensions around current ways of coexistence between humans and other beings on the planet. So on the one hand this project unfolded through attentiveness and wonder at the beauty of the natural water environments, and also through exploring the challenges of interspecies co-habitation that we are currently experiencing on Earth as the biodiversity diminishes and pollution increases. Everything else that unfolded in the project came out of our encounter and exchange with a group of children, as well as the condition of being outdoors only (due to the Covid crisis).

We were lucky that the project location was right at the river Spree in Berlin. So we could not only rely on our personal and collective memories and fantasies of water worlds, but get to know the river Spree, observe and explore its waterscape, draw and paint its movements and colours, pay attention to its qualities and creatures that live in and around the water: animals, fish, plants, birds, and many guests like human-made objects and rubbish. We also explored questions around empathy towards these very different from us beings. Kids are very aware of the problem of waste in the rivers, seas and oceans. To express our concern and compassion with their favourite creatures inhabiting water, kids drew portraits of their rivers, seas and oceans. Together we made water filters, as well as a collective sculpture of a whale, to express our wish for more human attention and care for the oceans, rivers, lakes and seas.

Last but not least, another part of the project was inner water worlds. One of the kids said that we are also 70% water, just like the Earth. What does that mean? Can we feel our inner water? And if we also have water inside, does someone live there? They say emotions flow. Maybe these inner water inhabitants are our emotions? By paying attention to how they feel today, children recorded their feelings as beings. Such emotional creatures cannot normally be seen, they can only be felt. And sometimes it is difficult to share how you feel. So we made a kind of emotion x-ray from a transparent plexiglass. Depending on how you feel today, you could stand accordingly and hold the plexiglass at the height of your belly (we found that we usually feel things there). This way your friends can see how you are feeling today and understand you better!

Project commissioned by KinderKünsteZentrum in Berlin
Participating children: FRÖBEL-Kindergarten Inselkinder Berlin
Exhibition on display at KinderKünsteZentrum between 20 May and 30 September 2021

Books of Senses

This series of 8 intragenerational workshops to reconnect to sense-based intelligence took place as part of School without Walls in 2019, in format of aesthetic research dedicated to sound, smell, taste, touch, sight, as well as the sense of self and sense of empathy. How many senses do we have really anyway? Senses as balance, interoception, proprioception, gravity, or even sensing magnetic fields, or a Japanese concept of MA as a sense of place, are rarely mentioned as real senses. We look at everything that enables perception of ourselves as well as tuning our sensory apparatus to the environment of other species and life forms around us, as senses that need to be recognised and payed attention to. During this Senses Series we experiment, explore, express, and experience sensuously, accompanied by a mobile creativity suitcase, that provides art materials for recording personal and collective experiences from the journey and making an own book of senses, as well as contributing to a collective Mook (magazine + book). Impressions here.

Petals, Beaks, and other Stories

This 3-day spatial storytelling journey took place between 3d and 5th of August 2021 at Kulturgarten Hödurstrasse Berlin. It invited children to notice the multitudes of creatures inhabiting the more-than-human landscapes of the city. Whom do we encounter when we step out of our home? Which living landscapes ask for our deep attentiveness and careful observation? Inner listening is just as important: through a process of exploring effortless movement, playful interactions, and free abstract painting participants create fantasy worlds, translating inner landscapes onto paper, that are then transformed into their personal journey books. These books will contain various languages of expression: words, images, sounds, shapes, colours,… In them we explore pluralities of pre-verbal orchestras of intangible languages. As David Abram asks in his book Becoming Animal, can we find ways of speaking that call us back into rapport with the other beings, the other living shapes and forms of this world?

Bottom to Top

How does growth happen in nature? What happens between a seed and an apple? Bottom to Top is a workshop focused on the subject of a tree as a living being and a living space. We go on a journey of exploration together with children and finish by feasting and celebrating nature and harvest. We move from the roots to the fruit, from one creative zone to another exploring life of a tree — where does it grow, what does it see around, how does it feed, how does it breathe, what does it feel, who are its friends. We learn about its inhabitants and the architecture of their houses. We experiment with colours and smells. We build a tree together — from the roots to the crown. Commissioned by Skolla, this workshop took place in Berlin’s Botanischer Volkspark Blankenfelde-Pankow in collaboration with other creative practitioners.

Being the Forest

During “Being the Forest” workshop series together with children we explored the natural environments of the city. We discussed and looked into the history of arts to find examples of how humans depict and interact with nature. We made our own forest installation from real and imaginary ingredients, individual and collective dreams, working with diverse materials (such as paper, cardboard, clay, leafs, sticks, colours, found objects) and techniques (observing, drawing, painting, sculpting, storytelling, light installation). The project aimed to raise attention and care for nature, to reconcile the world of arts, humanities and sciences in children's everyday experiences. Traces of the forest made by children became part of the window exhibition in Berlin-Neukölln. Commissioned by KinderKünsteZentrum in 2018. Parts of the series at KinderKünsteZentrum in collaboration with Varvara Polyakova and Samuele Huynh Hong.

The Weavers

Spiders are remarkable beings. Animals in our homes, working and public spaces we barely notice. These 8-legged creatures often wake up our fear, disgust, and fascination, intertwining. But do we really pay attention to their lives? Do we notice them climbing the walls, spinning their webs, dancing, swimming, changing skin, and even growing back lost limbs? How are little spiders born? What’s their favourite food? Why is their blood blue or green? Who was living on Earth earlier, a spider or a dinosaur? Why are spiders a vital part of our ecosystem? How did spiders make it into mythology and legends of so many cultures and civilizations? Do spiders dream?

In this project a group of children accompanied by a team of artists from a variety of expressive media backgrounds (visual arts, movement, photography, wood-work, aesthetic research) pays attention to the world of spiders from a human perspective, and then, flipping the roles, looks at the world of humans from a perspective of a spider. The relationship between weaving and storytelling is as old as time. During this project with a help of several threads we will bind together spoken and visual storytelling, movement and stillness, sound and silence, observation and imagination. We will attempt to weave a new story of relationships between humans and spiders.

Team for this series: Sabina Enéa Téari, William Veder, Michelle Bruce, Nathaniel Therrien, Egor Sviri. Intern post-production: Camille Brabant. Production and Organisation: Karen Hoffmann, Melanie Rothe. The project took place in 2019 at Casa Fantasia, NaturkundeMuseum, Studio Tomás Saraceno, parks and streets. Commissioned by the children museum KinderKünsteZentrum in Berlin. Exhibition patron: Studio Tomás Saraceno.

Inner Landscapes

This workshop invites to peek into the invisible worlds, to dance, draw, and model our emotions. We ask ourselves many questions: 'what is an emotion', 'how can emotions be described?', 'where do emotions come from?', 'what triggers an emotion?', 'are emotions important in everyday life?. Through this journey of paying attention, identifying, observing, and expressing emotions, children made intuitive creatures. We used the impulses from body movement and spontaneous drawing for this creation. Drawings were then transformed into 3D creatures made of wire and fine aluminium mesh. Finally, the project ended with the staging and lighting of the creatures in a light installation. In collaboration with Alice Baillaud. Took place at Heinrich-Seidel Schule, Bibliothek am Luisenbad, Olof-Palme-Zentrum. Commissioned by Kinder Kultur Monat in 2018.

Books are Windows

In this workshop series we looked at the history of books, how and why did books develop, how the invention of writing and drawing contributed to the expansion of our intelligence as species, what kind of materials were used to make books in the old days in different parts of the world. To learn about the history we visit museums, and then we try ourselves to make stone books, wooden books, papyrus books, parchment books, paper books, small books, large books, accordion books, elephant books, illustrated books, story books… In collaboration with Violeta Lopiz. Took place at Werkstatt Berlin, Neues Museum, Naturkunde Museum. Commissioned by Kinder Kultur Monat 2017.

Storytelling Journey

“When I was a Rhino…” was a creative storytelling exploration through painting, movement, drawing, stop-motion animation and play, as a series of 4 consecutive meetings. Together with children we went on an adventure into imagination: we invite them to explore storytelling through different media. We begin with experimentation through free natural movement. On the way we add colours and in playful interactions children paint with the whole body, leaving behind colourful traces. Through this process of free abstract painting and association children create landscapes and fantasy worlds. They invent stories about creatures who live there – in drawing, in playing, in storytelling. From the stories and drawings of children together we make a short animation film. As the next step children themselves turn into characters in their own stories. Together we create costumes and masks so they really become elephants, Nif-Nifs, trees, flowerpots, snowflakes, or any other creatures they chose to be. Dressed up, they act out their stories interacting with each other, while we film these encounters. At the end of this journey we have created a short film about our adventures together: an interplay between animation and theatrical performance. Team for this series: Sabina Enéa Teári, Romy Blümel, Egor Sviri. Here you can see the video of the story.

Perception of Space

In this project children experimented with, designed, inhabited, and transformed experiences of space (small and large scale) as an expression of their individual and collective imagination, and as a way to empower children to make their own environments in accordance to what they like, where they feel well. Along the course of this workshop series children created imaginary worlds from different types of paper, cardboard, colours: making sculpture, building structures, personal spaces, houses, animals’ homes, and collective environments. On the way they learned to build with different materials, work collaboratively, found out about the history of cave painting, imagined how the ancient humans saw the world; combining it all with movement, painting, drawing, storytelling, and interactive multimedia experiences. In collaboration with Kirstin Broussard and Alessandro Maggioni. Took place at Campus Rütli, KiKüZ. Commissioned by KinderKünsteZentrum in 2016.

Propositions

Propositions was a project for young children, which involved precisely that — propositions from the side of adults: we propose time, materials, space, where children can themselves discover possibilities and find out what and how they want to do with what we offered them. These interventions and proposals for kids take off from a place of paying attention to particular group of children, their current interests and fascinations. Noticing reality of what they are living at the moment, we can join the interests that they show in organic and respectful ways, based on active pedagogy, honest relationships, as well as arts and creative development in the center of their work with children. Commissioned by Nurserine in Paris in 2019.

Body and Art

Through the body we also express ourselves, who we are and what we feel. How do we do it? We speak, we sing, we write, we move, we draw and paint, we do all kinds of things where our heart, mind, hands and the whole body create and leave our inner mark on the outer world. In these meetings we also explore how our posture, or the way we move, and the way we breath are connected to how we feel. Does every expression leave a mark? Body is also a source of imagination. What if everything around us would sound? What if every object could easily turn out to be a living being? How would we feel living in another body? What if we all were part of one whole body? Can we draw with the whole body? Can we draw on the body? Can our bodies make music? These meetings are about imagining and celebrating the body in all forms. Sounding body sculpture created in collaboration with Playtronica. Took place at INA.Kindergarten. Commissioned by KinderKünsteZentrum 2017.

Senses Labs

In the world where we so often live in the digital and virtual, these labs explore sensory perception. Often our attention is dominated by visual culture at the expense of the other senses. Children spend a lot of time in front of the screens, and sometimes for hours a day they just use their eyes to gather information. The visual sense is very direct, it shows us “what is” and does not leave much room for the imagination. The sense of smell, touch, hearing, taste, are strongly connected with concepts of the body, emotions and cultural memory.

We’ve been developing senses-related programmes for kindergarten children, school kids, teens, and educators. For example, the project “Home is where the nose is” was dedicated to the sense of smell. It combines interpersonal communication, chemistry, psychology and neuroscience, botany, movement and art. With this project we wanted to spend time exploring the world around us through the sense of smell, developing attention for scents, creating our own scents, and thereby also telling stories. Commissioned by Skolla for teens between 13 and 15 at Heinrich-von-Stephan Gemeinschaftsschule Berlin.

Inside Outside

As human beings, we live in two worlds: the outer world and the inner one. We couldn’t agree more with Ken Robinson, who writes about our ability to know the world around us only through the world within us, through the senses by which we perceive it and the ideas by which we make sense of it. Our lives are formed by the constant interaction and interplay between these two worlds, each affecting how we see and act in the other. Inside Outside invited kids to explore in simple and playful ways the outer and the inner worlds of the body. We asked questions about what we are made of, what organs as well as feelings live in us, what we can perceive through our senses, and how we relate to our bodies through imagination. We learned how every body has a lot in common with each other, and at the same time how everybody is unique. We worked with different materials and explored various techniques, such as drawing, sculpting, painting, sensing, sounding, printing, making collage, moving, shadow tracing, as well as some basic meditative practices of paying attention. The class aims to raise self-awareness, curiosity, and appreciation of the body. Every child is unique and valuable. Let’s celebrate each other! Took place at INA.Kindergarten Prenzlauerberg. Commissioned by KinderKünsteZentrum in 2017.

City of the Future

How do we live in the cities and how do cities live in us? As a Russian street artist Radya writes in his urban art manifesto, our whole inner world is linked to the city; this connection is perpetuated through all of our senses. The city is the footprint we leave behind. It’s a faithful imprint of our times and ideas. The relationship between the inner and the outer worlds is the key element of street art. In this series of workshops we explored questions of How do children and young people imagine the city they genuinely want to live in? What do they miss in cities of today? What could cities of the future be like? And how can we start bringing these dreams into reality today?

This interdisciplinary project with teens within the fields of architecture, urbanism, landscape design and living together took place at Bauhaus Campus Berlin in 2017. Reflecting, imagining, playing, thinking, planning, feeling, building, shaping, filming. Around the subject of making cities we want to inhabit. We thank our partners and collaborators: Skolla, Bauhaus Museum Campus Berlin, Van Bo Le-Mentzel, Katja Schneider, Cristian Wiesenfeld, Sophie Jackson. Final video teens made as well as making-of here.

Into the Night

Into the Night was an installation and a workshop for families. It’s a merged experience between making and playing, participating and observing, works of “artists” and works of “visitors”, where visitors are creators too. The space is transformed by the power of our imagination, as we set out for a nocturnal exploration. Starting from the idea that at night everything is different, we create different stations of a journey through the night, where children and adults participate in creative activities, make their own masks, play with the experience of dark and light, draw with closed eyes, explore a cave with a flashlight, and together discover a surreal night world. In collaboration with Barbara Cousin, Estella Mare, Kirstin Broussard and other artists as part of Lange Nacht der Familien in Berlin.

Artist Book

In this week-long workshop for children from 6 years old we offered the participants to make their own artist’s books. During the workshop we talked about the tradition of the artist’s book, saw examples from art history, visited a museum and an artist studio, worked together to implement each our own artist’s book using a variety of tools and forms of expression, such as collage, painting, drawing with pencils, ink, charcoal. We explored subjects such as Self-portrait, Animals, Plants, Cities. We also moved and through movement left coloured traces on paper. At the end of the workshop there was an exhibition of all the work children have done and of the books they have made. In collaboration with Barbara Cousin and Estella Mare. Took place at Regenbogen Schule, Werkstadt, Berggruen Museum Berlin. Commissioned by Kinder Kultur Monat in 2016.

Renardeaux Art Workshops

Renardeaux Art Studio for kids was a series of art workshops for children developed and offered in collaboration with Barbara Cousin and Estella Mare. Each class offered a combination between insights into the world of art history and discoveries of works of art from different disciplines, media and epochs and an invitation to dive into personal experiments in drawing and painting, sculpture and collages, storytelling and performing, exploring different media, materials and techniques.

VerWANDlung

How do children and young people imagine the city they genuinely want to live in? What do they miss in cities of today? What could cities of the future be like? And how can we start bringing these dreams into reality today? VerWANDlung transforms the “walls” into “change” <<word play in German>>. As part of this project children from various local schools from Neukölln neighbourhood of Berlin have designed motifs for the public space transformation – for a giant tile wall on a little street, Neckarstrasse, in Berlin. They convey their visual visions to the fellow neighbours and guests: What is important for our city? What is important for us? What bugs us? The artwork is brought to the wall in cooperation with professional climbers. Participating schools: Hermann-Boddin-Schule, Werkschule Löwenherz, Röntgenschule. Supporting artists: Michael Bause, Barbara Cousin, Lucia Fischer, Seraphina Lenz, Marie Letkowski, Sabina Enéa Téari. Commissioned by Neukölln Cultural Disctrict and local city council in 2017.

Cave of Forgotten Dreams

Caves are our unifying human cultural heritage. Caves were there long before humans separated into groups, nations, religions. In caves the art of our civilization was born. We are interested in the cave as a metaphor, as a thread in human history. A connection to ancient humans. Ancestors of all. Cultural history going across thousands of years. We have designed Cave of Forgotten Dreams as a fusion between a workshop and a participatory installation. Through movement and drawing, sound and light, paper cutouts and shadows play, art installation and projections of moving images, we create a space where kids’ creativity can unfold naturally. Their curiosity and sense of adventure wake up as we venture together on the journey into the cave. It is designed as a meeting place of analog and digital, poetic and scientific, artistic and experiential, learning and expressing. In collaboration with Alessandro Maggioni. Commissioned by Kinder Künste Zentrum Berlin.

The Birth of Spring

A series of 4 consecutive meetings to celebrate spring. Together with children we looked at how painters from different time periods (the Renaissance artists, the Impressionists, as well as 18th century Indian painters) depicted this time of the year on canvas. We expressed our own impressions and experiences of spring using diverse techniques and materials (such as large and small format painting, drawing, collage, sculpting, printing). Movement exercises and games are at the foundation of this class. Through embodied engagement children develop presence, attention to their own experience, and confidence to express themselves.

Elf City

We built a city with kids and their families as a creative installation to be part of EXPERIMENTDAYS 2017 (an event dedicated to self-organisation, participation and innovation in the city). We are building a city for elves, animals and people. How does it look like? How does it sound? How does it smell? What plants live there? We create imaginary landscapes, using recycled materials. Thinking about sustainability, living together and diversity. Commissioned by ID 22 Sustainability Institute.

Tracing Movement

Tracing Movement was a series of workshops connecting movement and drawing. Everything we do leaves a mark. Combining movement with drawing is a very simple format to foster natural curiosity and open the space for kids where their imagination, mobility, personal ways of perception and expression are honoured and encouraged rather than imposed by adults. There are no right and wrong, nothing that is drawn is similar to real things, at the same time, resembles so many.

Body and the Outdoors

This workshop is about attention. Inner and outer awareness. In the contemporary digitalised world we often get disconnected from our bodies and the natural world around us. Disconnecting from the body this way, we disconnect from the multiple intelligences governing the body: physical, emotional, expressive. Through the body we also connect to the larger body of the Earth. The body and the natural world — both are our homes. There is a growing understanding that children need more of nature time in their lives. During this workshop we explored both worlds and used artistic media to tell stories from our explorations. We also experimented with the question in which environments do we feel most alive, curious and energised? What’s the relationship between body and space?

Photography in the City

Photography in the City’s main objectives were to create playful conditions for kids to explore the medium of photography, to see familiar areas with new eyes, to discover new places of the neighbourhood, to encourage kids to trust their own ways of seeing and develop a personal creative process, as well as to visit museums and galleries to see the works of other artists. Took place at Allegro Grundschule, Urban Nation, and the streets of Berlin. Commissioned by KinderKulturMonat in 2016.

Art + Science

Science teaches us to ask questions, to develop a spirit of inquiry, and experiment our way towards answers. Art gives us possibilities to explore questions and express ourselves: how we feel and see the world, and to walk our own path. Fusion and connection of these two approaches was the basis of this workshops series. Benefits of interdisciplinary practices are obvious not only for a harmonious individual development, where both brain hemispheres are in balance, but also for the global movement towards the integration of our fragmented contemporary world in the broader sense of the word. In collaboration with Olesya Chayka and BubbleScience.

Agora Experiment

Agora Experiment was a collaboration with Agora experimental self-directed learning school in Roermond, Holland. Aiming to bring movement, body awareness and imaginative storytelling into the learning process, we conducted some workshops directed at training attention through which kids learn more about themselves, who they are, what they want, what they like, what is good for them and what is not, in order to build a good base for a learning that is based on self-responsibility and mature awareness.