Luminous Green Retreat
Luminous forest, near Vielsalm (photo by FoAM)
Luminous Green 2010 Vielsalm, Belgium is a retreat about resilience; about a human world that is curious, imaginative, electrified and most importantly – keen to find out how human resourcefulness and nature can interact to affirmatively shape new realities of living.
The retreat is a place where to learn about and from each other. In the process, the participants attempt to jointly explore questions related to the theme of the retreat: resilience. What would a resilient human world be like? How do you experience resilience in your life? How do you encourage it in yourself and others? What can we do (or not do) as individuals, communities and organisations to increase the resilience of our environments and cultures?
The retreat aimed to stimulate transdisciplinary discussions and collaborations between people from all walks of life – artists, scientists, designers, academics, gardeners, activists, social entrepreneurs, cooks and policy-makers. The invited participants include renowned experts alongside enthusiasts, interested in making their work, life or society an example of resilience, and inspiration.
Hospitality of uncertainty. Luminous Green 26-28 July 2010, is a designed to encourage the interaction and commitment of everyone involved. The organisors (FoAM) were the hosts, gently kindling conversations, complentary overlaps between people’s views and propositions to engage with the uncertainty of what is to come and the ability to build upon emergent potential of a Luminous Green world.
Some of the open-space sessions and conversations included the following topics (at least that which caught my ears): Edible landscapes, social architecture, bio-mimicry, poetic witness, new rituals, homebrew resilience, collapsonomics, making the invisible sensible, pigeons and new rooftop ecologies, slime mould resilience, beetrooted reality, closed loops from cardboard to caviar