Metamorphosis on the weekend

What do we do now for the future? How do we shape it and how do we get started? We can think about and discuss this, scribble all over flipcharts and write on different colored cards. But you can also try out new approaches, go one or perhaps two steps further by taking a few forks in the road: Playing impro theater, sculpting, finding rhythm and listening together or moving through the space dancing as an organism, connecting with your own body, with its powers and with the people opposite. Transformation can be found in constant creation. Passing away and renewal.

«So, what I don't want is for the Waldorf School to be such and such in 2034. No, regnosis means we are already there. So we jump mentally into tomorrow and ask ourselves, looking backwards, how we got there - and what had to and could change on the way there.» With this comment, the co-organizer of the «Metamorphosis» workshop, Nicolas Michél Müller, sends the participants off into groups of four for a short brainstorming phase. The groups only have fifteen minutes to think about what the school and Waldorf education of tomorrow will look like in order to present their spun vision to the other participants as a play. Without a script and without losing momentum, the groups then perform their Regnose pieces, which are intended to send the audience on a journey into curious sensory utopias and havens of experience. Still nervous about agreeing on a vision with so little time and possibly presenting something dramaturgically interesting, the next moment I was surprised by the power of the moment and understood how important the factor of the unknown is. Müller also confirmed this: «We don't need more than 15 minutes of preparation for this. The most important thing is what comes out of the improvisation. In real life, unpredictable things happen all the time.»

What is Zukunft.Machen (Future in the Making)?

Zukunft.Machen is one of the four quality initiatives of the Bund der Freien Waldorfschulen (Association of Waldorf Schools Germany). The main aim of the project is to actively work together to shape the future. This takes place within the framework of its three-day workshops, which take place twice a year. Here, new ideas are developed, approaches are tested and discussed on an interdisciplinary basis. The project supports people in the implementation of their projects at schools – both in an advisory capacity and financially. Based on the basic principles of Waldorf education – the promotion of head, heart and hand – the project aims to turn students into active shapers of society. The focus is on the question: How can we act today to create a future worth living? Education is understood as a creative, holistic process. Zukunft.Machen combines practical skills with ethical considerations and visionary perspectives. The aim is not only to impart knowledge, but also to foster courage and personal responsibility. Particular attention is paid to promoting creativity and entrepreneurial thinking. At the same time, ethical issues are discussed: What responsibility do we have towards the environment, other people and future generations?

Pottery, chanting, dance meditation

«The Zukunft.Machen people are a bit crazy,» Ramón Louro laughs at me as he stuffs the last clay sculptures back into their 10-kilo bags. «I kind of like that,» I think with a grin. What was created from gray, fine-grained clay by working together for an hour beforehand will not be fired or stored afterwards, but was merely the subject of a social negotiation process. «Social sculpting» was the name of the session Louro led us through on Saturday morning. Two people sit opposite each other at a table with a block of clay between them. With their eyes closed and without agreement, both people are now asked to build a wall. After a while, the builders are allowed to inspect their work, close their eyes again and are then given the task of creating a path from one side to the other. And at the end, open your eyes and look again. Less than two seconds pass and the room fills with bubbling exchanges about what has just happened. «Every time I felt your hand, mine immediately went somewhere else, otherwise I would have found it so invasive,» my partner Nick recaps. Meanwhile, I recount how I kept bending a tunnel out of a tower Nick had formed because I thought it was a better idea. At some point I asked myself: Am I sticking to my agenda or is there room for other visions? Where can I realize myself and how does cooperation come about? On the six work tables, organic works of art were created, aesthetic waves, patchwork carpets that came together to form a wall. The actual product, however, was to understand social dynamics and oneself in cooperation a little better – one of the many strands of this weekend in preparation for the actual project work. «I'm all alone here» is a sentence that many people have said to themselves at some point, perhaps quietly, with a goal in mind, while dreaming. Those who are familiar with this inner doubter know what this thought can feel like in the body. Perhaps it hangs dully in the chest, heavy on the limbs, perhaps you feel as fragile as a raw egg. And what does an experience in the body feel like that gives us the opposite? How does it feel to be in tune with each other, to harmonize? And how does it feel to experience that the common can emerge precisely because I express my uniqueness as part of the whole and reveal something of myself? Marzella Steinmetz, music teacher at the Freie Waldorfschule Berlin Mitte, led us through this process with a powerful presence before we moved on to a somatic dance session with dancer Verena Sepp. Dancing freely with and in front of others was pure enjoyment for some, for others a big step out of their comfort zone. But it offered the possibility of new encounters with oneself, the space and other dancing bodies.

The reverberation

It's Wednesday, 7.30 pm. On a cold and wet November evening, five of the workshop participants meet via Zoom to talk about what has become of their respective projects. Martin Konrad, a teacher at the Freie Waldorfschule Bonn and co-organizer of Zukunft.Machen, states right at the beginning: «On the one hand, we at Zukunft.Machen create projects and accompany their implementation, but the second is the moment, the workshop itself, which sets something in motion internally and gives something to take with you into everyday life.» The others agree, Jona adds: «I have the feeling that you only just get in and get going on a weekend like this and then it's already over again. If only we had two more days to devote more time to planning and implementation ...» The daily routine and its challenges can quickly cause this to fail, as two project participants admitted at this meeting. Concentrating on the Fachabitur (vocational baccalaureate), somehow financing the new degree course, not getting bogged down. Luise talks passionately about her plan to transform schools. And not just somehow – «I want to weave transformative principles of Burning Man into Waldorf education. School is a complex adaptive system and the Burning Man culture is a very progressive-creative way of organizing community.» How does Luise want to tackle this? She wants to do a doctorate. Who could be a good contact person? The team thinks along with her and makes suggestions. Making the future also means knowing that there is a community in which you are seen and supported and can work together on important visions. We all need more of that.