After Summer School: SaturdayAfter Summer School: Saturday

This year’s programme especially explores ways of learning that foster peace through empathy, curiosity, imagination, listening, resistance, and resilience. It aims to strengthen social cohesion and create a shared sense of security for all.

This programme continues to collectively build the idea for a city-based Curriculum for Change. It comprises a series of classes, talks, workshops, and encounters that showcase and explore a multi-facetted, plural, inclusive and post-disciplinary approach to the city.   

Listening
Deep listening session by Di Fang x Colette Aliman

Situated on Rotterdam’s Brienenoord Island, a tidal island shaped by shifting waters and human traces, this workshop invites participants to explore attentive listening as a way of sensing place. Through guided deep listening exercises, a sound-walk, and hands-on mapping, participants will record and reflect on the island’s diverse sonic textures— on land and underwater, pleasant and harsh, expected and surprising. Using field recordings and visual materials, you will create spatial and experiential maps that reveal the island’s layered ecologies. The workshop cultivates an open, attentive approach to listening—embracing all sounds as clues to the city’s evolving story.

Saturday 20 September, 09:30–12:30 | Buitenplaats Brienenoord | English

Resistance / resilience
Workshop by Niels Spaans

Personal and local collections and archives are carriers of countless memories and stories, but how can you make a collection accessible on the level of the city, neighbourhood or your direct surroundings? How can a collection form value for others, and how to make sure they know how to find their way in it? In this workshop, Niels Spaans invites those who work or want to work with collections to explore the value(s) of their collection, for whom is it relevant, and how to make it accessible. Each collection holds stories that ought to be kept, shared, and understood.

Saturday 20 September, 09:30–12:00 | Cultuur Concreet | Dutch

Resistance / resilience
Workshop by (A)Wake x Learning Palestine

This workshop led by Learning Palestine collective will focus on sharing knowledge about the ongoing oppression and resistance in Palestine through historical and personal storytelling. During this in-person and intimate session, you will listen to Palestinian chants that are collectively and spontaneously improvised during weddings. These chants tell the history of Palestine using secret messages concealed by the celebratory rhythm of a wedding song. Together participants will interpret these chants and learn to create new ones re-telling stories of (local) resistance. Musicians are also welcome to join.

Saturday 20 September, 12.30–15.00 | Moezeum | English

Empathy / curiosity
Story Lecture by Verhalenhuis Belvédère

Imagine being arrested and detained for many years without trial, despite having done nothing wrong. Mohamedou Ould Slahi (1970) was unjustly imprisoned for 14 years in Guantánamo Bay, the infamous U.S. military prison in Cuba, where he endured severe torture. As a part of Verhalenhuis Belvédère’s Story Lecture series, Slahi—who has lived in the Netherlands since 2021 and is currently a writer-in-residence in Rotterdam— will share what this experience meant to him. Join this event to reflect on the transformative power of forgiveness. Reservation is required via the website of Verhalenhuis Belvédère.

Saturday 20 September, 14:00–16:00 | Verhalenhuis Belvédère | Dutch

Empathy / curiosity
LARP by WaterSchool by Studio Makkink & Bey

Water can act as a connector, communicator, and a diplomat in times of fragmentation, migration, and geopolitical tension. WaterSchool explores spaces where non-human species are reclaiming territory and new forms of co-existence emerge between humans and non-humans. In these transitional zones, they use Live Action Role Play (LARP) as an experiential participatory method to investigate ecology and social structures. Stories, rituals, and objects encourage new behaviours and understanding. In doing so, a living landscape takes shape, one where learning, behaviour, and transformation can occur. This embodied approach invites participants to become part of a regenerative ecosystem that is constantly evolving. This class, partly developed for and made possible by Bauhaus of the Seas, also takes place on Sunday.

Saturday 20 September, 15:30–18:30 | WaterSchool | English

Resistance / resilience
Skill-sharing by James Parnell

Conflict is an inherent part of any relationship or community, but this doesn’t mean that we all know how to deal with it. In this skill-sharing session led by James Parnell, participants exchange experiences and best practices for navigating conflict. What do people exactly fight about within communities? What factors (such as call outs or gossip) intensify conflicts? And what are different strategies we can use to navigate conflict within our spaces? Bring your stories, experiences and resources, to explore them together.

Saturday 20 September, 16:30–18:00 | Location TBC | English

Imagination
Conversation led by Willemijn Lofvers

In city development, policymakers, designers, and residents often work next to or against one another. They draw from forms of knowledge that are far apart. The skills needed to build a resilient, inclusive city together are rarely taught in traditional institutions. Instead, they can be found all throughout the city—in stories, lived experiences, art, and everyday life. In this conversation, led by Willemijn Lofvers, you will explore how situated knowledge, and interpersonal skills can contribute to a new curriculum and alternative approaches to shaping the city.

Saturday 20 September, 19:00-20:30 | Location TBC | Dutch/English

The After Summer School is a Rotterdam-based programme of the New Academy where a wide variety of knowledge producers teach their methods. How can we change the city by looking, listening, writing, archiving, collaborating, activating, researching, designing, and walking differently?

If you have any questions regarding the programme or would like to request a free solidarity ticket for financial reasons, you can contact us through laura.lakam@nieuweinstituut.nl.