After Summer School 2026: SaturdayAfter Summer School 2026: Saturday

The After Summer School explores the potential of 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. Classes will take place in various locations across the city, including community centres, gardens, gyms, libraries, streets, public squares, bunkers and islands.

This edition of the After Summer School coincides with Peace Week, an annual nationwide event organised by PAX that promotes social inclusion, active community involvement and dialogue. As with previous editions, the focus is on the qualities that foster peaceful coexistence, such as empathy, curiosity, imagination, listening, resistance and resilience.

Imagination
Workshop by Buitenplaats Brienenoord

Collaborating with the more-than-human fellow residents of Rotterdam can be challenging. As a human, how do you give a voice to non-humans? Which stories do you choose, and how to tell them? During this workshop at Buitenplaats Brienenoord, you will explore new forms of storytelling using puppets from Puppetry Library and instruments from the Island Orchestra. The puppets represent a growing collection of characters and perspectives, combined with instruments made from materials found on the island itself. Play, sound, and imagination form the starting point from which, step by step, an alternative story emerges about a piece of the Earth on the Island of Brienenoord. The programme concludes with a communal lunch.

Saturday 26 September, 10:00 – 12:30 | Buitenplaats Brienenoord | English / Dutch

Imagination
Workshop by Huis van de Toekomst

Step inside the Human-Powered House, an experimental home that runs entirely on human energy. Here, cooking, washing and other daily activities are performed using simple, homemade tools and without the use of external energy sources. The functions of a single household are shared within the residential block, with resources and responsibility being borne jointly. During this workshop, initiators Melle Smets and Studio C.A.R.E. will give you a tour of the house and lead a workshop. Together, you will design concepts for low-tech household appliances and test existing prototypes. Whatever your level of experience, come along to think and build. The programme concludes with a communal lunch.

Saturday 26 September, 10:00 – 12:00 | Huis van de Toekomst | English / Dutch

Empathy / Curiosity
Workshop by Emer Beamer

If children are the future, how to work with them now to shape it? Above all, this requires adults to start seeing young people from a different perspective. In this workshop, you learn to closely examine your own assumptions and beliefs, and then let them go. This will enable you to discover how our perceptions of children, young people and adulthood influence the way we collaborate and make decisions. Alongside social designer Emer Beamer, you explore ways to collaborate with young city residents through creative, design-oriented exercises.

Saturday 26 September, 13:00 – 15:30 | Het Wijkpaleis | Dutch

Resistance / Resilience
Story lecture by Verhalenhuis Belvédère

The power of imagination in art can teach us a great deal about the meaning and potential of peace and resistance. During this storytelling lecture at Verhalendepot Belvédère, you will meet two visual artists and activists whose works share the common thread of the themes of freedom, peace, oppression, resistance and solidarity. Juan Heinsohn fled Chile for the Netherlands as a young artist in the 1970s, while Mohand Abbtoy uses his art, poetry, music and cartoons to draw attention to his native region of Al Hoceima (Biya) in Morocco, where oppression and resistance are still palpable. The conversation will start with their stories and address their motivations, what we can learn from each other, and peace and resistance.

Saturday 26 September, 14:00 – 16:00 | Verhalendepot Belvédère (at Fenix) | Dutch

Resistance / Resilience
Walk by WORKNOT! & COOPIA

In what ways are the traces of colonialism visible in the city’s spatial design? This anticoloniality walking tour of Rotterdam exposes the colonial past in our familiar streets. Together with COOPIA and WORKNOT!, you will explore the relevant concepts as you tour the city. Through fieldwork, practical writing tasks and physical exercises, you learn to view the city differently at various scales, from the smallest details to the macro level. In doing so, you will uncover the hidden colonial presence and trace collective solidarity. The programme concludes with a shared meal.

Saturday 26 September, 16:00 – 20:00 | WORKNOT! | English

Imagination
Workshop door (A)WAKE & Islam Shabana

Traditions and customs can disappear due to taboos, convenience or practical considerations. But perhaps we can breathe new life into them by adding an artistic twist. During this workshop, artist Islam Shabana will expand on his Talsam project (‘talsam’ is Arabic for talisman, an object with magical powers). In it, he combines ancient Arabic talismanic traditions with modern technology. Using various chips, you will build your own occult device that is controlled by the position of the planets, the rhythm of the tides and aircraft and drone traffic in the sky. By programming it yourself, your technological talisman becomes a contemporary protective object or security protocol – an ‘algorithmic incantation’ that can serve as an encryption tool, a shield for your privacy or an anti-surveillance weapon.

Saturday 26 September, 18:00 – 20:00 | moezeum | English

Listening
Podcast by Stine Jensen

In the chaotic times we live in, philosophy often fulfils the role that religion used to play. Without religion, the wisdom of others can provide guidance on how to think and how to live. In the daily podcast Zin van de dag ('insight of the day'), philosopher, writer and podcaster Stine Jensen offers new wisdom, based on a particular insight into life. This special series, prepared for the After Summer School, features two new episodes with special guests Saskia Klaassen and Romy Rockx.

Saturday 26 September, all day | Online / Nieuwe Instituut | Dutch

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, please contact Ania Molenda. If you would like to request a free solidarity ticket for financial reasons, you can contact us through Laura Lakam.