Belgrade's reflection on the Sarajevo Pahtway Workshop
Author: The Centre for Experiments in Urban Studies (CEUS)
One day before the official start of UNE Belgrade, Dimitra Xidous, a researcher from Trinity College Dublin, hosted the Sarajevo Pathway - Connection to Nature workshop for the local community. On May 11, a group consisting of Belgrade architects, planners, researchers, science communicators, and teachers became participants of this unique experience.
In the author’s words: “The workshop centers people’s lived experience through the application of memory work, body-mapping, immersion in nature, and embodied reflection to explore relationships to nature across the past, present, and future. The workshop also introduces the layered stories of the places in which this workshop was first piloted, as part of H2020 project ConnectingNature – starting in March 2020 in Sarajevo, then in September 2020 in Nicosia, & then in 2 parts (June 2021 & November 2021) in A Coruña.”
It also incorporates the IPBES Values typology to zero in on how our individual lived experiences inform the ways we collective “live from, live in; live with; and live as – nature”.
The examination wanders in many directions but still adheres to the methodology, making the workshop both replicable and adaptable across various social groups. While sharing stories of our valuable nature spaces and places and then doing the nature immersion exercise, we felt the connection not only to the current environment around us, but also to gardens, fields, forests, beaches - joys and wounds of our past. In a gentle way, the workshop urges us to uncover all our layers and find ourselves again - living in, living from, living with, and living as nature, and examining what all of that means for us.
The examination wanders in many directions but still adheres to the methodology, making the workshop both replicable and adaptable across various social groups. While sharing stories of our valuable nature spaces and places and then doing the nature immersion exercise, we felt the connection not only to the current environment around us, but also to gardens, fields, forests, beaches - joys and wounds of our past. In a gentle way, the workshop urges us to uncover all our layers and find ourselves again - living in, living from, living with, and living as nature, and examining what all of that means for us.
In the local context, the inevitable connection with Sarajevo, one of the main cities of former Yugoslavia (just like Belgrade), and stories of fellow participants in Sarajevo that Dimitra carefully shared - the intertwined memories civil war and urban nature - also struck a cord with attendees in Belgrade. A deep sorrow for the common country that once promised the life of equality and solidarity for all it citizens and faced a bitter end is so deeply engraved in our collective consciousness that it was a logical part of reflections and ruminations on our shared environment. Just like nature, the universal humanity know no borders.
Sarajevo Pathway / Connection to Nature Workshop was a perfect way to (re)set before the official start of the meeting and color it in a new, perhaps unexpected tones - the ones of openness, vibrancy, of basic human closeness, of shared truths. It helps one to become grounded, which is quite important when working on plans that should ultimately benefit human and other-than-human communities.
While trying to keep up with the protocols and rationality of our lives, we often overlook how emotional perception influences our headspace and the "rational" decisions we make. We can't shake the feeling that this workshop will benefit each aspect of what we do.
Thank you, Dimitra Xidous and our dear attendees - we learned so much from you!
If you would like to work with Dimitra on the planning and delivery of a workshop, please get in touch: hello [at] empathway [dot] org (hello[at]empathway[dot]org)
Or, visit the website to learn more: https://www.empathway.org/
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