Children’s Forest Group

The younger participants of the Forest Symposium are invited to step into the perspective of fish and water in and around the forest and meadows forests and meadows of the Orlické Mountains. What can you hear? What can you smell? Where does your body end, and where does it begin? How does it feel to be out of the water? Can your lungs adapt to this new environment?
Together with artist and educator Eva Koťátková and artistic and somatic trainer Barbara Gamper, the children will engage in a participatory process engaging their bodies and imagination. In dialogue with Eva Koťátková’s textile fish—created as part of her installation during the 2025 Pastoral Twilight residency—Barbara and Eva will guide them through Becoming Fish, Becoming Ocean, a series of exercises attuned to the sensing and breathing of more-than-human beings.

Taking the fish as a point of departure, the program opens a collective exploration of how organs such as the heart and lungs pulse, expand, and contract according to their own rhythms. Through movement, shared choreographies, drawing, writing, and other creative explorations, participants will be invited to inhabit these dynamics and imagine embodied ways of relating to the more-than-human world.

At the end of the symposium, the children's forest group will share with all the participants their collective process through a performative intervention.

Children’s Forest Group is curated by Barbara Gamper and Eva Koťátková in collaboration with Lisa Mazza and Simone Mair (BAU).

PROGRAMME

Friday 17 July
15:00 – 17:00 Arrival, registration, accommodation
17:00 – 18:00 Programme
18:00 – 19:00 Programme
19:00 – 20:30 Forest Kitchen: dinner
20:30 – 23:00 Programme

Saturday 18 July
8:30 – 10:00 Forest Kitchen: breakfast
10:00 – 11:00 Programme
10:45 – 11:00 Forest Kitchen: snack for children
11:00 – 13:00 Programme  
12:30 – 14:30 Forest Kitchen: lunch for children
14:30 – 17:30 Programme
16:30 – 17:00 Forest Kitchen: snack for children
18:00 – 19:00 Programme
19:00 – 21:00 Forest Kitchen: dinner for children
21:00 – 23:30 Programme

Sunday 19 July
8:00 – 09:30 Forest Kitchen: breakfast
9:30 – 10:30 Somatic exercises with Barbara Gamper, Eva Koťátková and the Forest Children’s Group: Becoming Fish, Becoming Ocean (in English with Czech translation)
11:00 – 12:00 Programme
10:45 – 11:00 Forest Kitchen: snack for children
12:00 – 13:00 Programme
13:00 – 15:00 Forest Kitchen: lunch for children
15:00 – 16:30 Programme
16:30 – 17:00 Forest Kitchen: snack for children and adults