What kind of world do you want to live in? Connect 2009

by Caitlin Balmer

from the Youth Section E-News

From April 19–23, the Connect Conference 2009 challenged over 500 people, mainly class 12 students from Waldorf schools all over the world, to work on this question: What kind of world do you want to live in? It is a question of our time, and it’s one we can ask every moment for lifetimes to come. We didn’t solve any major world crises (at least not that I know about yet!), but we found that we do have the capacity to create spaces in time where people can ask questions like this, where they can practice being the way they want to be, and where they can push to the edges of their everyday experience of the world. In spaces like this, Connect can happen.

Caitlin Balmer

The Connect Conference invites whole classes to come to the Goetheanum. The program is full, from student-led workshops to theater and eurythmy performances in the great hall of the Goetheanum. Connect has happened three times before (2003, 2005, and 2007). A new team organized this fourth one: Katha, Che, and I took on this challenging experiment. For us it was a dramatic learning experience, and a time of beautiful creativity. Many evening dinners and long train rides yielded conversations about society, about responsibility, about fundraising, and also about ourselves.

What was the shining star of the whole event? That’s impossible to say, but there were more than 143 workshops over the four mornings of Connect. Each student who came to Connect was invited to share their class 12 project in a workshop or presentation, and they did. We saw the meaning of the word professional—“a person who is expert at his or her work”—in action. I feel encouraged about the whole human race! A lot of the time there is not much to be hopeful about, and most of the time young people get the bad reputation (you know— “disrespectful, obnoxious, immature”). But after the experience of Connect I have a hunch (or rather, I am convinced) that actually the hope we can have for creating a sustainable, livable future lies in the innovative, energetic, and sincere attitudes and actions of young people.

But it’s not just young people. We’re all in it together, and every single person took on a task at Connect—teachers, students, parents, children... We had over 7,000 Swiss francs worth of food donated to the conference from local farmers and shops. That means we had 350 kilos of potatoes and 300 kilos of carrots that had to be washed, peeled, and cut throughout the week in order for all of us to eat. During the closing, Che asked everyone who had peeled a potato to stand up. I have to tell you, very few people were left sitting, and they probably had really good excuses (when I say very few, I mean that about 450 people stood up!). What I’m getting at in a round-about way is this, and it’s something we all know to be true: if everyone does their part, and a bit extra, then we’re going to be just fine. Even better, we’re going to live in a society that we all want to live in, because we all had a hand in creating it, not just a few people. I think for everyone who took part in this conference, it was an experience of some kind of personal development. It was designed actually in a way that would push everyone to that edge, because each and every one of us was responsible for creating Connect.

We live in a society that doesn’t actually value individuality or community, rather some bizarre mix of the two in which the amount of consumption a person does is how valued they are. We want to practice living in a world where people can truly be themselves, and where we actually live in community. That’s what we tried out at Connect this year, and I think it was a success. Next time, we’re going to risk even more and try even newer things, because by continuously taking courage and stepping to that edge, we can let human creativity flourish.