Symposium 'Sense of Place' June 11 & 12

In 2018, Leeuwarden will be the European Capital of Culture. The title of Lwd 2018 is Iepen Mienskip. Iepen is the Frisian word for ‘open’, whereas  Mienskip represents the Frisian sense of community.

One of the main events of Lwd 2018 is Sense of Place. Initiator of Sense of Place is Oerol, the international theatre festival of Terschelling which attracts for over 30 years more than 50,000 visitors. In 2013, Oerol organized the first Sense of Place seminar on cultural landscape development.

During the two-day seminar in 2013, Oerol and guest curator Tracy Metz delved deeper into the dynamic interchange of culture, history and this landscape that has been shaped in equal part by man and by nature. The seminar program offered a range of talks, workshops and excursions and acted as the inspirational starting point for developing cross-over projects in the Wadden Sea area in the future.

The 12th symposium  of the Wadden Academy will further explore and elaborate on the different aspects of Sense of Place. The symposium takes place just before the opening of Oerol 2014,  and will be organised in cooperation with the Department of Cultural Geography of the University of Groningen, the Institute of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology of the Leiden University, the Oerol theatre festival and the Leeuwarden 2018 foundation.

Themes of the symposium are: Identity, Resilience, Grief and consolation and Leeuwarden Cultural Capital 2018.

Moderator: Tracy Metz. Speakers a.o.:  Godfrey Baldacchino (Professor of Sociology at the University of Malta), Beatte Ratter (Professor at the Institute for Geography of the University of Hamburg), Ian Biggs (Reader in Visual Art Practice at the University of the West England Bristol), Joop Mulder (founder and creative director Oerol).

The registration deadline is June 1st. The number of participants is limited to 125 persons.