Age of Wonderland Daily Talk: Community, Eindhoven, World Design Event
A report by Floor Fiers
Towards a global learning community, breaking boundaries and building together
Age of Wonderland’s slogan “No change without exchange” perfectly points at the theme of today’s talk show. Community refers both to a group of individuals and to the sense of fellowship between the individuals. Age of Wonderland as a four-year project attempts to build a global learning community. In today’s Daily Age of Wonderland Talk, Arne Hendriks, Christine Wagner and their guests try to grow a common understanding of community and its different implications.
Today’s guests give us an inside to different perspectives of community. First, three designers from the Design Academy Eindhoven take the floor. Their activities during the Dutch Design Week have been great community builders. Afterwards, the Indian breath coach Rajbir Kaur speaks about her experiences of community. Our third guest, Joris de Groot, talks about the sense of community in his cooperation with the Indonesian (radio)journalist Iman Abdurrahman. Both the Ugandan writer Gloria Kiconco and Dutch filmmaker Douwe van der Werf talk about storytelling to find and build community. Last guest is Germaine Verbruggen, who is an English teacher at the Nederlandse School. She experienced a new sense of community, while having Age of Wonderland fellow Arie Syarifuddin visisted her classroom.
Building community while cooking
Timm Donke, Leif Czakai and Nathan Fordy together form the Volunteers Design Collab. Yesterday as well as last Tuesday, they organized the Bricknick — an event where participants can cook food in hollow bricks. Together the bricks form an oven. This delicious activity was a success in every way: Many people joined to prepare some food, to select their food together and to chat while waiting for their meals. Since building an oven is required for eating, cooperation and good vibes turned out to be inevitable.
“The sense of family occurs more often than only within your actual family”
The idea that different cultures understand the concept of community differently becomes clear in Rajbir’s explation of her sense of community. In India as well as many other Eastern countries, the family is an important community. The family, which is the first community you are part of, includes your grandparents as well. Sharing is an important activity in such an extended group. When she started traveling on her own, Rajbir discovered the sense of family occurs more often than only within her actual family. During her travels, strangers would often share their knowledge about the environment. Rajbir considers breathing as an important part of conscious living. In her workshop today, she shares her knowledge about breathing techniques.
Community radio
Joris de Groot is a Dutch designer, who worked with Iman Abdurrahman in producing a particular type of backpack. Iman is an Indonesian Age of Wonderland fellow, who has a special interest in the use of community radio during disasters. Joris worked with Iman to design a backpack with all the radio instruments to collect and share to predict natural hazards. Joris describes the way their two worlds came together. While he would look into Dutch companies and their use of specific materials, Iman shared his knowledge about community radios. The project required a strong connection between the two world citizens from entire different parts of the world.
Storytelling breaks down hierarchies
Talking about a different part of the world: Gloria teaches the audience the Ugandan word “Ubuntu,” which is used interchangeably for community and humanity. Ubuntu concerns an interaction between the individual and the community: the individual thrives when the community does and the other way around. Despite strong communities, Gloria still notices hierarchies — for example in age or between the two genders. Two important exercises she uses in attempt to dismantle these hierarchies are storytelling and improvisation activities. Storytelling breaks down, according to Gloria, the assumptions different people might have of each other.
One another guest who values storytelling is Douwe, who is a Dutch filmmaker. He starts off by proclaiming that communities cannot exist without stories. While making films, he constantly searches for the overarching stories. That way the stories get the power to be prominent over a lifetime and to evoke change. Douwe questions what the stories are that operate our lives, as humans are products of their own and others’ stories. Becoming aware of those prominent stories enables us to change them. To keep update with Douwe’s progression in searching and documenting on stories, go to biggerstory.org.
Change your own environment
Our last guest of today is Germaine, an English teacher at the Nederlandse School. Through Age of Wonderland she met Arie, who is an enthusiastic Indonesia with a heart for building community. When he visited Germaine’s classroom, something unexpected happened: Arie wanted to build a party with the students. While the boys started drumming and the girls started dancing, Arie encouraged the students to look at the classroom environment entirely different. He inspired the youngsters to change their own community for example in terms of street safety.
Today’s talk show certainly demonstrates the global urge and desire for a sense of community. The theme of today’s Age of Wonderland day is community, but one is easily able to call the entire project a communal effort for community.
This Day of Learning was part of Age of Wonderland’s Daily Talks.
At the core of World Design Event, People’s Pavilion at Eindhoven’s Strijp-S, Age of Wonderland hosted a daily talk show. Each day focused on a specific topic: Activism, Energy, Ecology, Learning by doing, Sense of self, Community, Intimacy, Empathy and Empowerment.
visit www.ageofwonderland.nl to find out more about this program.
