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 – 19:00 Welcome children and introduction; new names, new identities; casting shells in human hands; creation of forest notebooks

Saturday 18 July
10:00 – 10:45 Waking up the fish: Gentle movement warm-up and exploration (parents are welcome to join); Swimming in the woods; Drawing: What kind of a fish are you?
10:45 – 11:00 Forest Kitchen: snack for children
11:00 – 13:00 Becoming fish: Different movement and choreography exercises, swarming; Drawing the inner landscape of the body: Where does our body end and where does it begin? Creating external lungs: What do we breathe in and out?
13:00 – 14:30 Forest Kitchen: lunch for children
14:30 – 16:30 Stories of the fish; Moving as a collective body; Creation of costumes and props
16:30 – 17:00 Forest Kitchen: snack for children
17:00 – 19:00 Rehearsal for becoming fish, becoming ocean
19:00 – 21:00 Forest Kitchen: dinner for children

Sunday 19 July
9:30 – 10:30 Becoming Fish, Becoming Ocean – somatic movement exploration for adults resulting in a joint parade/performance with the Children’s Forest Group
10:45 – 11:00 Forest Kitchen: snack for children
11:00 – 13:00 Sharing circle; collecting, writing down, memorizing
13:00 – 14:30 Forest Kitchen: lunch for children
14:30 – 16:30 Game: Ecosystem of a lake, of an ocean; Creation of watering
spots/drinking holes for all inhabitants of the Woods; Finding lost objects in the ocean of the Woods
16:30 – 17:00 Forest Kitchen: snack for children