In the first week of August I attended the European Summer Festival. It was quite an interesting experience, and so I would like to write a short post about it so it can hopefully be useful to the group (and beyond).
The main feature of the festival is that it is co-created. This means that everybody is welcome workshops, activities, dinner tables etc (and depending on the country, also that you need to help with the dishes).
Overall I would say there were about 100 adults and 20 children and youngsters from all over Europe. The kiddos have their own entertainment foreseen, which makes that you don’t see them that much.
What I like about it were the workshops. There were a lot of experienced NVC trainers, but there were even more people who offered things that were not about NVC like for example Internal Family Systems, tribal technologies, conflict management, shadow work etc. There are also always so many offerings that there was always something that I liked. The system of so-called “open space technology” also makes that you can freely walk in and out of any workshop, which to me at least creates a great sense of freedom.
Another thing at I really liked were the conversations in between. The atmosphere is really open, so you can pretty much join any table and have a chat with the people who sit there. That’s if you don’t see any people with whom you attended a workshop of course (you quickly get to know many people). The dedicated lunch and dinner tables were also interesting, and the camp fire was always a nice and relaxing way to end the day.
The community life as a whole was a bit of an unknown quantity in the beginning, because I was a bit worried that there would be a big conflict like they experienced them when they just started the festival, but after a few days I understood that over time they learned to manage the potentially explosive situations. To be honest I even found it quite interesting to be a bit of an observer in somebody else’s group dynamics, and I truly enjoyed the conversations with peers about the challenges we meet as self-managed groups. The support systems they put in place to take care of people who are having a difficult moment I also found truly inspiring.
To sum up: it was a great experience and I recommend it to everybody.
The next festival will take place in Belgium from 19 to 26 July 2027.