Two Festivals

Hi All,

The first thing we like to say is that we want to thank everyone who is travelling along with us on this blog. It gives such a warm feeling that you all are so interested and involved. Many thanks for your enthusiasm, support and your empowering words! You all help us to get where we want to go. And for all new readers; a warm welcome to our blog!  With love Anna & Rick

Two festivals, a workshop and numerous demonstrations

As you noticed, we switched to writing in English. Because funnily enough we gained - now we're at home for only a month - many international contacts who we like to keep informed. If you have thoughts about whatever would be interesting to talk about, please don’t hesitate to send us your message.

Last month we brought the two main ideas we have been working on into the world. We presented our solar oven at the festival Rakuvaria Live 2011 in Sevenum in the Netherlands. A week later we gave a workshop at the Leisure Festival of our graduation department Man and Leisure at the Design Academy in Eindhoven. Here we presented our ideas for the design retreats (OntwerpRetraites) that we are developing.

Ceramics Festival in North Limburg
After weeks of rain we were hoping that there would be enough sun to put the solar oven in action. And there was! During the festival Rakuvaria-Live we presented our new solar oven to the outside world. At Pentecost Sunday their where a lot of sunbeams to receive and take in for demonstrations. The oven worked even better than expected.

Each time the sun appeared we demonstrated the oven to the public by setting a beam of wood on fire. 
Incinerating the wooden stick is like magic, because the focuspoint of the furnace is in fact invisible. It floats on a fixed point in the sky. And if you hold a stick in there, it seems like the wood catches fire spontaneously. It is happening within a second, and that raises very surprised reactions! "Huh? Where did that fire come from? "And" How is that possible? ". Especially the ooohs and aaahs, and whooos during the demonstrations are very funny and amusing!

The audience came from near and far. People came from Finland and France, Belgium and Germany, and there were also a number of Britons who made the crossing! Many people thought along with us. We got surprised, serious, incredulous, attentive, and above all happy and friendly reactions. We heard things like: "What a beautiful project, this really is the future!" and "How great that you are doing this!" There were also some people who where thinking along on technical aspects, which was very helpful. We both enjoyed the enthusiastic and encouraging words and also the more critical comments very much.

Only the second day we were able to walk around the festival grounds. There was a lot of pottery sold, many new techniques were displayed and raku demonstrations were given. Meanwhile French accordion melodies sounded cheerful on the site. There were also 'primeval' blacksmiths who showed how iron was forged in the Iron Age. We spoke to a tin caster who showed us melting techniques and we immediately saw a possibility for cooperation. We are going to do some experiments with tin in Portugal, because it already melts at 232 degrees Celsius. That should be a piece of cake for our solar oven.

The Leisure Festival

We have been working on our next project for a while already; developing design retreats (in Dutch; OntwerpRetraites). The Leisure Festival on the 18^th of June gave us a good opportunity to bring our ideas into the world and to probe how the concept would be received. We took care of our first workshop at Saturday, which was received very well. We've got very positive feedback and good advice from the participants. These days of retreat are going to be about how your creative spirit can contribute to a healthy and inspiring life for all. It’s about what is needed in a conscious world and how to work from the power of your soul to bring the most inspiring projects into the world. We are developing the design retreats for professional creatives who seek deepening in their work and lives. And we think it should be possible for us to organize the first design retreats at the end of this year.

Accessible events like these festivals helps us tremendously to improve on our stories. By repeatedly telling our story we could try many variations and we enjoyed the free-wheeling of doing this. It enables us to more precisely articulate what we believe in, and we sense that this is important. So participating in a festival is absolutely inspiring! If you have heard of a festival or exposition where our projects fit, please let us know.

That’s it for now. This week we will travel back to Portugal, and we will continue our story from there, bye bye.