|
||||
Building the City of Focus
There are now less than three weeks to go until Focus: International Initiative Forum and HeartChord Music Festival! Things are beginning to take shape, and we wanted to offer a space for the sharing and collecting of thoughts, resources and discussions. So, for this, we have created a new Focus Ning Website.
During Focus we imagine the Goetheanum transformed into a city where different 'neighbourhoods' will focus on different themes. The main neighbourhoods which currently appear on the Focus Ning website are: Arts, Sciences, The Social, as well as Inner Life & Philiosphy (we have also created a forum for Travel To/From Focus). Within these neighbourhoods, different 'houses' can host specific themes, including new forms of higher education, campuses as places for sustainable development, social threefolding, music, medicine, inner schooling, to name but a few.
Check out the website to see the existing neighbourhoods and houses. If you would like to add specific themes (houses) within the main neighbourhoods, you can do so by creating a new discussion under the main neighbourhoods mentioned above. The forum space is the place for everything that doesn't as yet fit into a neighbourhood.
The Focus Ning is also the place to share thoughts and resources (and the place to see what other people are interested in) whether you are coming to Focus or not.
The website will be a place of 'collection' so that we are better able to build the city – the City of Focus.
Click to visit the FOCUS NING WEBSITE
Registrations Open!
Focus: International Initiative Forum (April 5–9) HeartChord Music Festival (April 9–11) Dornach, Switzerland
There is a new mood walking the earth…
If you are planning on coming to Focus and/or HeartChord and haven't yet registered, you can register securely online via the YouthSection website by clicking here.
Click to visit the FOCUS WEBSITE Click to visit the HEARTCHORD WEBSITE
There is a community of individuals who have agreed to re-imagine the world…
Emerge! Training, PhilippinesNow is the hour.We face an ever‐deepening global crisis – economic, social, environmental – a crisis we have created.
We are Civil Society – the third force in societal governance.
Please join us.
The birth of new Culture and the rise of Civil Society to its rightful place.
A peer-led intensive training for young Cultural Creatives (artists, educators, activists and leaders within business, politics and civil society); a forum for global collaboration; an opportunity to meet each other, share ideas, learn the tools of cultural power (the Lemniscate Process, Social Sculpture, Theory U, World Café and many others) and create the future that is waiting to emerge.
WHEN: Sunday, April 25 ‐ Sunday, May 2 WHERE: 1) Camp Explore at the Mount Purro Nature Reserve WHO: Young leaders working in the fields of education, art and social media. World‐renowned presenters, facilitators, and artists will include: Orland Bishop, Nicanor Perlas, Walter Siegfried Hahn, Joey Ayala and others. COST: An equal exchange of energy. The true logistical cost per head is at least P15,000. Financial assistance, including travel costs, can be creatively worked with upon request. We want everyone who feels called to join us to be able to. Toward this end, please consider fundraising or paying as much as you are able. By paying at the higher end of the range you will allow someone with less economic resources to attend. This is a strictly non‐profit event. All funds raised will go toward scholarships, insuring as diverse participation as possible. If you are called to support this endeavor as a social entrepreneur, investments in cash or kind will be gladly accepted.
Click to visit the EMERGE WEBSITE
Pictures from the New Zealand Summer Gathering
Meeting the World and Shaping the Future. What is being asked of our generation, in our time? How do we work with innovation of the past, and with creativity for the future? How do we really see each other, and work together with space open for that part of each of us which is ‘not yet?’
These are questions that arose within the group of young people that came to this year’s Summer Gathering at Te Ra Waldorf School, near Wellington. They are questions which are being asked in similar ways by countless cultures, in countless countries – questions which will be present in our lives and which must be faced. If not us, who? If not now, when?
  
A Message from Elizabeth Wirsching
Dear readers of the e-news Dear friends.
MOVING FORWARD BY TAKING A STEP BACK
I came to the YouthSection at the Goetheanum in the year 2000 after 17 years of teaching in Norway. At that I time I could imagine myself working seven years for the YouthSection and then move on to something else. I was convinced that it would not be healthy to stay too long in a leading position.
Now 10 years gone, and I am still in the YouthSection. During these years many things happened at the Goetheanum. We organise every year international conferences to different themes to grasp and include the variety among the needs of the youth. Our activities at the Goetheanum have been an important springboard for many initiatives worldwide. The growth in the YouthSection has been remarkable and also very personal, as we know each other well. We assume that we have about 10,000 young friends in our network. The extraordinary quality of our work is the strong connection we feel and have with one another; the ideas we have focused upon, exchanged and also tried to realise. Many of you have grown older and are facing a new reality in life: the challenge of transferring your ideals into not only action but also into a living.
Over the two last years I have asked myself when the right time will come for me to leave the YouthSection. Maybe it sounds strange to you that I ask these question in a time when the YouthSection is really in its blossoming. I think that it is better and realistic to leave a leading position when the mood is really optimistic and positive. The substance we have built up is carrying on for the people to come and also for us!
I have also been occupied with the fact that the network is growing older. Who will follow this up, support and advise? Sooner or later all of you will take a step back from the YouthSection to move on.
The themes that have dominated our work have had a strong connection to challenges in our time. The social and ethical questions have had a special place and I will call the way we have worked “for inner and outer sustainability.” We have built up a life mood, a life attitude where our higher ideals are something to be practiced in the reality of life. This has been my own profile in my work during all these years, something that will continue to be my theme in the future.
I hope you agree with me that our work has not only meant something for a short term, but also for a long term, building a foundation for our next steps in life. To say it in my own words: You feel the earth under your feet!
My consideration came to a conclusion in June 2009; to leave the YouthSection in the summer of 2011, in one and a half year’s time. I can assure you that the reason for this has nothing do with not being content with our work. I think you all know that I love every second of our work!
I feel a change, also of generations, and in respect of the “not yet born themes and initiatives” I see it is time to leave the space open and free, as it was left for me when I came in 2000.
In summer 2011 I will move back to Norway. What I will do is still uncertain, it is written in the stars, and I will find a way to continue to support the existing network. You know, you all grow older.
The next one and a half years I will concentrate my work to follow up existing initiatives and groups and support you all in your next steps.
A natural question is: Who will take over the leadership in the YouthSection? This is a question and a responsibility for the leadership at the Goetheanum as well (where I am a part). Now we have time to consider aspects of this and come with a suggestion for the procedure.
In this time we will have talks with different youth groups.
In love and with respect Elizabeth Wirsching
Website We're Checking Out
Includes video interviews with Nicanor Perlas on:
The website also includes A Cultural Manifesto For Our Time
What We're Listening To
HeartChord Music Festival on MySpace
Music from some of the many upcoming HeartChord performers, including Kaspar, Matre, Gosia Basinska, Guy Collins, Silas Beardslee and Mikael Hakkarainen.
Initiative Space Balance for Zimbabwe - The Rimbi Farm Project
The Rimbi Farm Project is a concept to create a community based, supported and benefitting Biodynamic farm in Eastern, rural Zimbabwe. Through community engagement, the wish is to introduce a new type of agriculture that not only has the potential to boost harvest quantity through crop rotation and Permaculture, but also create job opportunities, a space for cultural exchange and, ultimately, a new source of hope. The intent of this project has many different levels and aspects but one main goal is to harvest awareness to the potential that lies within this community, in and of itself. The aim is to create a space to start conversations that can lead to healthy community development; through Biodynamics, create a new way for people to work together, closer to the earth, and from that work build deeper relationships with one another that will perhaps fulfill a wish for a more integrated, supportive community where no one is left to fend for themselves. Click here to visit the website. Click here to make a donation.
 Alliance for Sustainable Kapiti
This Alliance is saying 'No' to a motorway being built through the Kapiti Coast near Wellington - including through Te Ra Waldorf School, which hosted this year's New Zealand Summer Gathering. They are saying 'Yes' to more sustainable options, and are working towards the inclusion of civil society (including groups like ASK) in future decision making processes. Click to SIGN THEIR ONLINE PETITION, which will be delivered to New Zealand's Prime Minister.
Applications for 2010-2011 are now being accepted for the Free Columbia Art Course. The course is a full time, year long course introducing the fundamentals of the art of painting as they come to life through anthroposophy. It includes daily painting, study of fundamentals of anthroposophy, anthroposophy and art, Goethe’s color experiments and theory, art history and the evolution of consciousness, aesthetic philosophy, singing, eurythmy, marionette theater and the threefold nature of society. This course is working toward being supported entirely by donations. There are currently seven fulltime, tuition-free positions available for 2010/11. First decisions will be made in May. The course takes place in Hillsdale, New York, USA. If you would like to learn more, visit www.freecolumbia.org
Coming Events
Events at Sunbridge Institute, Spring Valley, New York: Spring and Summer.
For a full list of events, as well as plenty of other information, visit us at www.youthsection.org
|
||||
|
If you want to edit your subscription or unsubscribe, click here. |
