Youth Section Goetheanum July News

"AN OPEN SPACE FOR THE FUTURE TO BECOME"

Dear friends of the Youth Section worldwide,

We hope you have had an inspiring start of the new season so far!

At the end of April, we received over 600 students from 30 different countries who attended "Courage" - the latest International Student's Conference. The participant's enthusiasm and dedication re-enlivened the atmosphere in the Dornach hill and in Basel, where an artistic intervention took place for citizens and passer-by's to experience. Meeting the participants filled us of hope and trust in the future that the youth carries within.

The end of spring also marked the beginning of a new team, with Johannes Kronenberg (27, Netherlands) joining Andrea, Constanza, Ioana, Ronja and Till at the Goetheanum. Johannes' commitment to Youth Section work both in the Netherlands and Worldwide for the past 5 years, is an invaluable gift for the rest of us in the team. Welcome Johannes! We are so grateful that you said YES to being here with us.

The Youth Section is fully alive, brimming with ideas and joyful striving, as we were able to see during our Youth Section Worldwide Gathering last weekend. 60 representatives of the Youth Section came to the Goetheanum to report on the work being done in 19 different locations around the world.

An atmosphere of work in fraternity accompanied us throughout, inspiring us to continue deepening our tasks within the anthroposophical movement as young people. As a team of participants described, "the Youth Section is an open space for the future to become".

And so, in this edition of our newsletter, we share with you how the future is being shaped by young people in events (Questions of Courage, Spring Valley New York), projects (ReSearch: The Spiritual Striving of Youth - Shaping our Reality) and many more activities. As you will see, courage continues to be a central theme in this year's activities and indeed, we wish you all wherever you are, much courage to meet that which wants to come from the future to be realised in the world today.

Andrea de la Cruz, Constanza Kaliks, Ioana Viscrianu,
Johannes Kronenberg, Ronja Eis, and Till Höffner.
(Photo by Macarena Barreiro Krajl)

"Courage as a path to the realisation of the good"
by Ioana Viscrianu

Courage - a search for change, the shaping of a character trait or perhaps a virtue? This was the theme of this year's student conference at the Goetheanum, where 650 students had the chance to engage with the topic in a variety of ways and thus take impulses with them in order to increasingly find this human quality within themselves and make it visible in the world. In the many encounters, but also in the attention of the participants during the contributions, an authentic search for it could be witnessed...

"Practicing Courage in the search for a new world "

by Johannes Kronenberg

"On Friday the 15th of March 2019, an estimated number of 1.8 million young people did not go to school. Instead, they filled the streets around our globe for an attempt to formulate what they feel, observe and want to transform: a world in existential need for renewal. It is the first time in history that this amount of young people occupied public space. They raised their voices to the "older" generations, to act upon what is called climate change more drastically. However, a lot of them sense quite well that there is more going on and that climate change might be the top of the iceberg of something profoundly transformative about to happen.

Just about a month after this event 650 high school students from over 30 countries did not go to school either. They exchanged their known homes for an unknown travel to Dornach, Switzerland, in order to witness and practice questions of Courage..."

"Future visions of the youth"

by Andrea de la Cruz

"At the Youth Section we see it as one of our central tasks to give voice to the wisdom that lives in young people, and to foster the impulses and initiatives that come from this. After

hearing the voices of the youth who attended the International Students Conference, I began to wonder, what would happen in the world if all of us took the initiatives that are living in these young people as our own? What if what lives within them became also our reality? What if we accompanied them in their actions to realise that future vision?"

"A journey to yourself and to the world"
by Ronja Eis

"The freedom within our work asked us to work in a very conscious way and to observe ourselves within this process in order to critically reflect on it and us. The deeper we dealt with ourselves, the more we connected ourselves with the topic of fear and courage. What does it actually mean to critically reflect on oneself? It meant confronting ourselves with our ideals and visions and facing the fear of being wrong. What if how I see the world does not fit with how my colleagues see the world? When our ways of working together differ? What if I would have to rethink my whole world view? Suddenly there was fear, fear of not knowing. And then curiosity which eventually developed into courage."

"Bringing conference content into the public sphere" always sounded so beautiful, so meaningful, so necessary. But how does one actually do that? What content is it about and in what form can it be shared with others? What role do we as organizers and what role do the participants play in the shaping of this space? It was important to us that no message or content was imposed on anyone, which would contradict what we could actually experience as 'conference content'.

A free engagement with diverse topics, in great respect for our fellow human beings. A common learning from each other. An unconditional interest in the other, the otherness of the other. What would the world look like if a global dialogue also looked like this even in a political realm? We do not have a common opinion, nor a common goal. What we actually wanted to express, the just described spirit, this special interacting in a free dialogue, gets lost as soon as it is tried to be expressed in form of a choreography, a speech choir or similar.

How can one nowadays bring opinions, impulses and questions into the public eye in a way in which they find a hearing?"

"To be young in the storms of the 21st century"

In this article, Johannes touches on his motivations to work in the Youth Section and to deepen in Anthroposophy in order to meet the challenges that meet the youth of the 21st century.

“It’s stormy outside, really. Waves are high and the wind is strong. Ships, even whole fleets sink. In former times the wisdom of the stars, of this bright grand sky above, was used to navigate in these circumstances. However today, it seems that even these anchor points of cosmic guidance are not a given any longer. Undefined clouds are covering their guiding lights. And there I am, and there we are. Hold on.”

"The earth is the very quintessence of the human condition"

Hannah Arendt

February Days is the Youth Section's winter conference when we deepen our study of relevant topics through Anthroposophy. Next year we will focus on questions of sustainability, climate change and the urgency of planet Earth's situation, which undoubtedly asks each human being to reconnect with nature and the meaning of our relationship with the blue planet.

A new team is already working on the programme, so more information will follow soon. For now, please save the date and if you have questions, suggestions or ideas, please get in touch with us!

How did the elements that surround us emerge? Which rhythms have been preserved within them? What is the essential nature of time? How do the creative hierarchies develop in the co-creation of humanity? How does the consciousness develop in them and in the emergent human being?

These are some of the questions that we will work with during this unique study week taking place this summer at the Goetheanum. The Humanities Section is kindly inviting young people under 35 to attend the conference for free! All you have to do is email us and let us know of your interest.

The event takes place in German, with a possibility of English translation if there is enough subscribers who need it.

Questions of Courage
North American Youth Conference
August 8 -11 2019
Spring Valley, New York

Join us in Spring Valley, New York this summer, as we bring to life what lies just outside the margins of the comfortable, to stir the deeper questions that articulate the soul and move us in our more intimate moments…In gathering together we hope to find inspiration to re-imagine new futures, new possibilities for our earth and humankind.

Members of the Youth Section Worldwide will attend the event and host workshops and talks. Here's a snippet of how (Re)Search: The Spiritual Striving of Youth - Shaping our Reality, our youth-led social study will be present at the event.

COURAGE!
TO FACE OUR BLIND SPOTS
Keynote by Andrea de la Cruz

(Re)Search: The Spiritual Striving of Youth – Shaping Our Reality is a youth-led research project by the Youth Section of the Goetheanum-School of Spiritual Science.

Through 40 in-depth interviews with 18-35-year olds from all walks of life and 23 different countries, the team sheds light on the living questions, ideals and motivations that are present in youth today, motivating us to become active participants in the world.

In the first phases of research we learnt about how we, the young people, experience our reality and yet, what are the blind spots in our narratives of the world? What are we not paying attention to? What are the elements, which from the darkness, wait for our interest and awareness to awake?

QUESTIONS OF COURAGE (Re)SEARCH WORKSHOP

How do you experience reality? What is living in you and how would the world look like in 2030 if what is living in you becomes a reality? What will you do to make this happen?

These are the questions at the heart of our research project. During the workshop, we will work with these as a base to formulate our own individual questions for research. We will also explore how the way in which we put our questions in the world, and the way in which we approach each other in asking, may be a way to transform ourselves and our society.

The 'World Goetheanum Association' will award at least €50,000 to anthroposophy-inspired initiatives through a live crowdfunding process at this year's forum from 27-28 September 2019.

Entrepreneurs and institutional leaders will be present at the forum, so that the amount awarded can be even higher, especially if inspiring projects appear. No guarantee can be given that an initiative presented at the forum will also receive funding. All funding decisions are only made on-site, within the framework of a collaborative allocation process of all participants.

Who can apply?
Applications are open to non-governmental initiatives from all walks of life that have a direct or extended connection with anthroposophy. From ecological to social, humanitarian, scientific, educational, political or artistic concerns - whether individuals, groups, associations or social enterprises - we look forward to receiving your application!

Click here for the application form!