And it was REALLY big - a lot bigger than I was prepared for - fantastic*
Last Saturday THE BIG CONVERSATION on Safety and Freedom took place in Beursschouwbourg, organized in cooperation with Goethe Institut and Panoptykon Foundation. It was such an inspiring, in-depth and highly professional organized event, which gave the participants a lot of strength and new ideas for their diverse practices … 12 very diverse experts and protagonists from a multitude of disciplines of topics of interests were present to share their expertise in conversation groups of up to 15 persons. The participants had the chance to choose one out of 8 conversation tables and to attend 3 of such session á 50 minutes. There were artistic interventions during the evening and a lot of space for discourse …
Globe Aroma, an open house for art and people was invited for such an artistic intervention, reading out poems on the human rights declaration in the White Cube of Beurs. A super project*

I attended the conversations of Dietmar Kammerer about surveillance, Eva de Beardemaeker about (un)safe & playful environments and with Kritikos Pandelis Mwansa about ethnic profiling. Each of them so different and unique. This format of gathering, input, dialogue and exchange is fantastic and I am sure some sustainable alliances have been developed that night.
I personally would like to get to know far more about Eva de Beardemaeker’s project CULTUREGHEM, a community engaged experimental organisation in a huge market hall in Anderlecht … let’s check that out!