The summer school “Urban Synergies: Co-creating thriving connections for humans with nature” was a 昀椀ve-day event, taking place in Berlin 15-19 July 2024 involving young people from Europe and beyond. It centered around the challenging questions: How can we live and thrive together? How can we not only overcome polarities but nurture diversity and dignity for all? How can cities not only adapt to climate change but restore and regenerate relationships with nature, resources and with communities around us?
Climate Walk
The Climate Walk on Day 1 served two purposes: to arrive with our embodied presence in the geographical setting of the 5 day summer school as well as to arrive as individual to the group and possibly encounter a smaller peer group to interact with during the week. Climate signifies in a narrow sense the „average weather“ measured over a period. A social climate describes how people interact with each other. Transformation is part of both climates.
In the 3 hours artistic embodied experience the group was invited to either explore as individual, pairs or in small groups sections of the walk which led in its first phase from busy Hermannstraße in Neukölln right through a graveyard onto the edge of Tempelhofer Field. For most people this was completely new territory having arrived the day before from all over the world. Passing by gravesites on which neighbours garden, hang out in hammocks, walk their dogs or read, is strange enough for many cultures. This silent walking alternated with dialogical sections throughout the encounter. Walking a runway in 29 degrees heat with a waste sunny, cloudless sky above everyone heads led to an exchange in pairs about the sky one lives under. The experience of such a rich world of flora and fauna in the center of Berlin, a huge, seemingly hostile open space without trees, a meeting place for humans and non-humans alike, has astonished many, especially when a falcon was hunting next to us.
The walk led onto a second cemetery, the „Cemetery behind the Hasenheide“, shared by Muslims and Christians since 1866. The cemetery invited the group into a forest climate dominated by old trees.
Reflecting the embodied experience of sensing rather than thinking alone, in smaller groups and sometimes the entire group led to the final phase in the Hasenheide park where the individuals were asked to take a decision for the upcoming 5 days, by finding their peer group by walking towards each other and sensing the presence of the others.
Integrating art in climate and transformative practices can expand people’s imagination of a regenerative, equitable, and peaceful present and future because art has the capacity to offer this experiential spaces.
