Rotterdam Change Days 2025: At work in the Ruins
Workshops
In the spirit of the classic Berlin Change Days format, we have invited contributions from change practitioners – long standing community members and curious new companions alike – who are ready to explore questions of leadership, culture, learning and group dynamics through the logics of the unimaginable.
We are offering many workshops that stir the soil – experiments, provocations that give shape to new change practices within and beyond the organisational playground. That move us toward what Hine calls building good ruins.
This means starting from where we are – tasks that acknowledge our entanglements with the multi-perspective troubles we are in:
- Salvage the good that we may take along from the world that is ending.
- Mourn the good that cannot be taken with us.
- Notice the things that were never as good as we told ourselves they were.
- Notice dropped threads that may be picked up again – forgotten skills, overlooked wisdoms, practices that once fell out of fashion, but now glimmer with relevance.
These tasks – quiet, strange, or surprisingly familiar – might offer ways of living and working in the ruins of our times.
All the contributions take the form of on-site, experimental and experiential inquiries – rooted in art, in the body or in the natural world. Grounded in science or spirituality, in indigenous worldviews, collective knowing, or poetic imagination. They offer a space to listen, to feel, to move – to explore something you don’t yet fully understand.
In this workshop Jillian Reilly will explore her concept of Ten Permissions through the body. The Ten Permissions are ten specific ways to reimagine navigating adult life in the chaos […]
Rachel Malek will guide the participants between silence and sound to explore the stories we carry about the future—through open dialogue, mindful pauses, and collective storytelling. Using simple, evocative prompts […]
Often we feel like we are drowning in our grief for the world - because mostly we mourn alone. And mourning is much easier to bear if you do it […]
In Hanneke‘s workshop the objective won't be to discuss the concept of liminality, but to explore liminal space within ourselves. Where does it take seat in your body? How does […]
What stays with us from the ruins of what used to be? How do we deal with the absence of what we once valued, and the echoes it left behind? […]
This exploration will be inspired by Dougald Hines’ invitation to turn away from the brightly lit multi-lane highway that society is inviting us to walk on towards a sustainable future. […]
It is an undeniable reality that climate-related trauma is not just a human experience. The more-than-human world remembers, feels, responds, and grieves too. So, how do we approach a space […]
What remains unsaid in our practice, our systems, our selves — and what happens when we try to finish those conversations with the help of an AI? Co-facilitation between a […]
Be prepared to let go of habits and dive into unknown territories. It is a real live experience of uncertainty (walking and letting the arrows fly at the same time), […]
Carla Wijnandts and Yannis Angelis will host a warm data lab as developed by Nora Bateson. Warm data is all about life making life through intricate relationships and complexity that […]
Did you know that humor is the harbinger of healing emotionally? Find ‘The First Laugh’ in stories from your life that were hard or challenging when they were happening, yet […]
Martin‘s workshop aims to explore transformation—both material and metaphorical—through the ancient, embodied practice of sourdough bread baking. By engaging with the natural fermentation process, we examine how simple elements evolve […]
Robert Dasovic and Juliette Mattijsen will invite participants into a live, imaginative experiment in collective care: a commons co-design lab. Together, will they explore what a health commons could look […]
Get to know Ontopoesis - a dynamic concept that involves the communicative engagement of self with the world and the world with the self. Ontopoesis is a form of phenomenology […]
How can we use the wisdom of our body to make decisions that are grounded, sensitive and regenerative? Because we ARE nature! Dorchess de Koning will work with embodiment exercises […]
The stories, narratives, and the tacit knowing that can help us move forward through change are deeply engrained in our bodies, and sometimes it takes a very sensory spark to […]
Jukka-Pekka Heikilä offers a very experimental art based and participative workshop where participants use art (movie scenes) as a complex systems measurement tool that invites individual maps of interpretations and […]
Learning to stay true to what we have lived, to what is dying and to what we grow into, is one of the most intimate versions of dealing with a […]
Often, we talk about system change in terms of the external, of radically changing structures or processes, changing how people relate to services and where power is located. But systems […]
In a world facing ecological, emotional, and systemic fragmentation, reconnecting with nature’s wisdom offers a powerful metaphor for self-awareness and regenerative leadership. Trees teach us resilience, interdependence, adaptability and creativity […]
This workshop is designed to address the challenges of collective resilience and environmental degradation. It invites via a practical example to imagine how Rotterdam, a city built on infertile ground, […]
Impressum / Imprint
Rotterdam Change Days
Esther Barfoot
Netherlands
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