March 2025

We're well underway with the Freedom Tours Wageningen tour co-creation process! We started with the tour co-creation process on 14 March with around 10 co-creators - a mix of local residents, university students and AZC residents. 

Follow our co-creation process on the Freedom Tours Wageningen website blog and join us on Instagram, LinkedIn and Facebook. 

We've got a team of people working behind the scenes across different local organisations to bring this whole transdisciplinary thing to life. Launched by Wageningen University & Research (WUR) students and staff from the Cultural Geography chair group and MSc Tourism, Society & Environment programme, this project is proudly supported by WUR’s Diversity & Inclusion unit, Tourism@WUR, Wageningen's Vrijheidskwartier, Gemeente Wageningen, de bblthk, Wageningen45, Society-Based Education @ WUR, Leerecosysteem Wageningen, Thuis Wageningen and Wageningen Doet. 

We officially launch the tour on Saturday, 28 June, just in time for it to be part of Pride month, since the focus for this pilot tour route is looking at freedoms through the lens of gender and LGBTQ+ identity.

March 2025 

I was interviewed for a story on medical tourism published in Het Financieele Dagblad that came out this month! Always good to talk about the fascinating industry that has developed around this phenomenon. And, last summer, I was interviewed by a Belgian newspaper about men travelling for hair transplants in Turkey. The need and desire to cross borders for medical care continues to grow.

March 2025

Check out this video for a recap of the kinds of things we've been up to these last years!

We celebrated the Transformative Learning Hub's 5th anniversary this month in a beautiful gathering that brought us together for reflection on what we've been exploring, what we've gained and where we want to go. I'm so grateful for the opportunity to have co-founded and to continue to co-coordinate the Hub.

Participants shared that the Transformative Learning Hub has given its members: a sense of belonging, connection, and inspiration among a community of like-minded individuals; a safe space for learning, creativity, and experimentation; new perspectives on research, education, and academia; encouragement to be creative and think outside the box; hope and energy for trying new things in academia; courage to experiment and explore different methodologies; a space to bring one's whole self confidently into one's work; validation and support for alternative ways of doing research; and opportunities to connect across disciplines and institutions.

We said we'd like to see, do and have more spaces for connection and collaboration; more opportunities to experiment with new research and teaching methods; expansion of the network, linking with other initiatives at Wageningen University & Research and beyond; formalizing training and certification opportunities; cross-disciplinary and international engagement; informal gatherings, peer coaching, and retreats; greater institutional support for transformative learning and research; more public sharing of work, experiences, and methods; engagement with policy and governance for systemic change; and growing the community into a movement of change in academia.

We also identified ways in which we can support the Transformative Learning Hub and how it can support us. These include: sharing work, methods, and experiences; helping to organize events and exchanges; creating a digital community for ongoing interaction; providing mentorship and peer support; bringing transformative learning into more formal education settings; co-writing and publishing outputs together; and connecting with policy co-creation and citizen science.

There's a lot to explore and develop together over these next 5 years! Join us and help us bring these ideas and plans to life!

Special thanks to those facilitating and presenting throughout the day - all of whom were scholars, practitioners and artists that have been involved in our TPAR course, transformative learning training and Hub events over the years! Melissa Adriana Rojas - Anna Roodhof - Tom Kiel & Anke Brons - Eveline Massop & Daphne Rotte - Lambert Rozema - Kate Foster - Elisabet Rasch & Sonja Marzi - Mieke Latijnhouwer - Neza Krek

January 2025

Website: https://www.freedomtourswageningen.nl/ 

What does ‘freedom’ mean to you? How we each might respond to this question is very personal – it’s based on people’s diverse array of privileges and positions within the societies in which they live. A key way of thinking about freedom is, on the one hand, what we have ‘freedom to’ do (e.g., think, choose, say, be, etc.) and, on the other, what we have ‘freedom from’ (e.g., hunger; violence; social and political interference, domination or oppression; etc.). The combination of these lays the groundwork for a society in which its members can thrive, both individually and collectively. Yet there is significant tension between these two types of freedom, as one person or group’s ‘freedom to’ can interfere with another’s ‘freedom from’. ‘Freedom’ does not mean doing whatever we want without consequences. It comes with responsibility and the understanding that our actions can impact not only ourselves but also others, both near and far.  

Wageningen is well-known throughout the Netherlands as the site of the country’s liberation from Nazi occupation, with the capitulation by the German forces being signed at the Hotel De Wereld on 5 May 1945 in Hotel de Wereld. Today, Wageningen is promoted as the City of Liberation, with many events organised around the 5th May Liberation Day anniversary, the Vrijheidskwartier, museum exhibitions and tours that highlight the city’s Second World War heritage in enabling the country’s freedom from the Nazi regime’s oppression.  

Freedom Tours Wageningen is a new collaborative initiative between Wageningen University and diverse local stakeholders. It aims to offer a set of co-created interactive guided walking tour routes in Wageningen that build on the important work already being done to honor the city’s Second World War heritage by expanding engagement with the concept and scope of ‘freedom’ in the past, present and future.  

The tour routes, to be developed and led by Wageningen residents with diverse backgrounds, will promote awareness of the complexities of freedom and how these are negotiated, highlighting both challenges and local initiatives working to ensure and advance the rights and liberties of Wageningen’s diverse residents in inclusive ways. Given contemporary tensions both around the globe and at home that are putting our freedoms in jeopardy, tour routes are timely contributions to Wageningen’s heritage offerings to help participants – school children, long-term residents, newcomers and visitors alike – learn about, reflect on freedom and familiarise themselves with initiatives and tools to take action to protect and advance it. To begin, we wish to co-create and run a pilot tour route that will be ready by mid-2025. 

We are hosting an event on 29 January at Wageningen 45 to engage diverse Wageningen-based stakeholders to help us with: 

• Recruiting tour route co-creation participants from within their networks that might also like to lead tours; 

• Supporting the tour route co-creation and guide training process with their knowledge (e.g., about local heritages and past/present social initiatives) and skills (e.g., storytelling and guiding); 

• Enriching tour routes by being featured as a tour route stop and sharing about their initiatives (e.g., food shop selling products that participants can taste, etc.);

• Offering baseline support (e.g., use of venue for tour co-creation and training, seed funding for tour initiative development and coordination, etc.) 

Interested? Get in touch with Meghann at meghann.ormond [@] wur.nl 

Freedom Tours Wageningen is a co-created guided walking tour initiative inspired by the success of projects like Migrantour Utrecht and the self-guided Wageningen Decolonial Tour. 

November 2024

Barcelona-based NGO Nexes Interculturals hosted a 3-day event (4-6 Nov.) funded by Erasmus+ KA1 for 30 representatives from organisations from 11 European countries that have Migrantour initiatives and like-minded initiatives that focus on narrative change around migration and empowerment of people with diverse migration backgrounds. It was my great honour to be able to co-organise and -facilitate the event together with Nexes's director Davide Tonon and his wonderful colleagues, Alberto, Carlotta and Lo. 

The event was focused on participants sharing and developing ‘glocal’ visions on migration and inclusion narratives; exchange good practices on co-creating, running and adapting Migrantour guided walking tours in rural and urban contexts; and getting inspired from invited experts, local initiatives, and each other about approaches and methods for shifting dominant migration narratives to foster greater inclusion.

Each day brought a new theme and, with it, an array of provocations, activities and site visits:

• Day 1: Responding to anti-immigrant sentiment

  • Social entrepreneur and engaged sociologist Martin Habiague (Mescladis) kicked off the day by exploring how to respond to anti-immigrant sentiment. 

  • The group mapped the issues facing people with migration backgrounds in their respective countries, regions and local areas.  We noticed we were facing many similarities (e.g., rising anti-immigrant sentiment, housing shortages, rising cost of living, job precarity and discrimination, slow regularisation procedures, access to credit, etc.) but also recognised marked differences in local contexts (e.g., how the EU border is being managed, human smuggling, countries' diverse social welfare conditions, different integration and inclusion policies, etc.). This experience was followed by the identification and exchange of good practices addressing these challenges. In such a dark time, hope - and the willingness to act that it requires - remains. We saw how much we can learn from each other and get through this difficult time. 

  • We took the two Migrantour Barcelona guided walking tours - one route in El Raval and another in Poble Sec. 

  • The day wrapped up at Mescladis for dinner.

• Day 2: Incorporating intersectionality

  • Trainer and Afropreneur Diara Ballo started out the day with a talk about intersectionality. Our group then engaged in an interactive exercise that brought to light dimensions of our own complex social identities and we brought that intersectional awareness into reflection on how we can better integrate an intersectional approach into our tours, team collaborations and partnerships.

  • We headed to Coopolis in the afternoon to learn from MIGRESS about diverse social and solidarity economy initiatives supporting people with migration backgrounds. 

  • We even got treated to a body percussion workshop at La Fede.Cat!

• Day 3: Narratives that invite dialogue

  • President of SOS Racisme Catalunya Cheikh Drame started out the day with sharing his personal experience of institutional racism, followed by a reflection on how racism saturates everyday narratives and how to address them effectively. 

  • We headed to the Dialegs de Dona intercultural association to see how women with diverse migration backgrounds are being supported to not only develop language and job skills but also to have opportunities for greater contact with Barcelona residents with backgrounds different from their own. 

  • Before wrapping up the event at Cooperativa La Base, we had a closing session with Sara Bellbeida, Barcelona Municipality's Commissioner for Citizen Relations and Cultural and Religious Diversity. 

Participants came from AlterBrussels (Belgium), Ayuntamiento Bilbao (Spain), Fondazione Acra (Italy), Bastina Association (France), Cooperativa Ruah (Italy), GMD Training and Consultacy Services Ltd (Malta), GAR - Göç Araştırmaları Derneği (Turkey), Kinoniki Sineteristiki (Greece), Local Action Group Svilengrad Area (Bulgaria), Nexes Interculturals (Spain), Renovar a Mouraria (Portugal), She4She (Hungary), Stichting Collective Nouns (The Netherlands), and Terra Vera (Slovenia).

October 2024

I travelled to Warsaw for the kick-off the Hello Accelerator on migration and employment, a special initiative made possible by Ashoka and IKEA Social Entrepreneurship. I'll be working together over these next months with a group of brilliant, dedicated people spanning civil society, policymaking, business and academia. One of the big challenges we addressed in our preliminary conversations was the difficulty involved in working towards #narrativechange around #migration: how to proactively 'broaden the narrative space in the public debate, rather than focusing all our efforts on reacting to opposition narratives and arguments' (International Centre for Policy Advocacy)? 

As part of the Hello Accelerator kick-off, I got to contribute with a talk on the second evening at the Polish national Konsorcjum Migracyjne's 5th Meeting on Collaboration and Integration, emphasising the need to amplify voices of people with migration backgrounds and change the ways in which we are represented in political, media and popular discourse. Migrantour Utrecht and Roots Guide served as examples of approaches to contribute to fostering narrative change. Many thanks to the organisers for this opportunity!

Konsorcjum Migracyjne's work is really inspiring, and their coalition of non-profit organisations working on migration issues throughout the country should serve as a model for other European countries. I would love to see something like this in the Netherlands, where I live. It's more urgent than ever that we unite our voices, expertise and experience.

#AceleradoraHola #Ashoka #HelloWorld #EveryMigrantAChangemaker #IKEASocialEntrepreneurship 

October 2024

Members of the Roots Guide Nederland project (led by Stichting Pocket Stories) and Migrantour Utrecht - two initiatives focused on bringing about narrative change about immigration in Europe and the Netherlands - came together at De Voorkamer from all throughout the country for a very special moment of exchange. Having been involved in developing both over the last several years, it felt truly special to finally be able to bring so many members of these initiatives together in one place! 

Following a Migrantour Utrecht guided walking tour and a special lunch where contributors of both initiatives exchanged their storytelling experiences and what they gained from participating, Roots Guide contributors generously offered Migrantour intercultural companions many copies of the Roots Guide Nederland guidebook and educational toolkit. 

These impactful publications will be widely shared with Migrantour tour/workshop participants and partners over the coming months. And, given the current political situation in the Netherlands and throughout Europe, the timing couldn't be better. We need as many good resources as possible to continue the hard work involved in raising awareness and facilitating reflection and dialogue on migration, diversity and inclusion.

• Find out more about the Roots Guide guidebook (in Dutch) at the Pocket Stories site: https://www.ourpocketstories.org/rootsguide 

• Read and download the Roots Guide Educational Toolkit (in English) in PDF: https://zenodo.org/records/12216690 

• Read and download the article entitled 'Beyond multicultural ‘tolerance’: guided tours and guidebooks as transformative tools for civic learning' that I co-authored with Francesco Vietti about both Roots Guide and Migrantour: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09669582.2021.1901908 

• Join a Migrantour Utrecht guided walking tour: https://www.migrantourutrecht.nl/ 

October 2024

The Museum of Approaches was developed as part of the GEO 30306 Concepts & Approaches for Tourism, Society & Environment course that I coordinate. It's part of the MSc Tourism, Society & Environment at Wageningen University & Research. The Museum of Approaches is a temporary physical and permanent virtual public space created with the purpose of translating diverse approaches to tourism knowledge production into accessible, meaningful exhibition 'pieces' that help us all not only to better understand their nuances but also to grasp their presence and applicability in our daily lives. It is a museum made by students for students. Course participants have developed all the resources on the site themselves.

Gain insight into five key approaches that have been fundamental not only to shaping how we study tourism phenomena but also to shaping the contexts in which tourism phenomena have developed: positivism, interpretivism, Marxian political economy, transnational feminism, and poststructuralism. Each approach offers unique tools and perspectives, helping us to question assumptions, explore alternative viewpoints, and develop a holistic understanding of the issues we care about. These approaches shape our understanding of the world, often in ways we may not realise.

Check out the Museum of Approaches: https://sites.google.com/view/museum-of-approaches/home 

August 2024

Alejandra Guijo Bermejo and I are about to launch our new podcast 'Tourism for Good: Where Philosophy Meets Practice! In it, we explore the philosophies and values inspiring and guiding the development of more sustainable and responsible tourism practices around the world. In each episode, we delve into the experiences of a different changemaker working to make travel, tourism and hospitality more environmentally, socially and economically sustainable and to support more mindful and regenerative practices. Join us as we uncover the inspiration and hard-earned wisdom that drive and support these initiatives. 

Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5DdNL2wJEEVCkKTBtrcZmf 

August 2024

I gave two collective lino printing and storytelling workshops at De Superette as part of the city of Wageningen's Cultuur Zomer programme. Small groups of workshop participants worked together to create a collective lino 'patchwork' print based on their group’s stories around the theme of food and culture. Participants shared their recipes, eating habits and stories with each other and then each created a piece of a lino patchwork, celebrating the diversity of tastes and traditions. 

Check out the programme here: https://wageningsecultuurzomer.nl/event/verhalen-delen-met-linografie/ 

May 2024

The ‘WE*GENERATE’ podcast series from CityDNA interviews destinations across Europe to find out what it really means to generate together, regenerative tourism futures.  

How can the diverse layers of place and heritage be represented in a destination? How can we redefine “localhood” to be more inclusive? How can tourism experiences be co-created through a participatory approach, involving diverse groups of people to represent a place? In part two of three in the sequence, WE*GENERATE: PLACES, City Destinations Alliance/CityDNA's Sarah Frosh for their new podcast WE*GENERATE interviewed me about co-founding Migrantour Utrecht.

Listen to the interview here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/4vjvkxiYYwgR1JLCSnMEnT?si=6rMr4EfOQ_KNSyqwY9Y6IA 

Takeaways

• Migrantour Utrecht is a guided walking tour co-created by people with refugee and migration backgrounds, providing a platform for them to share their experiences and perceptions of the places they live.

• The process involves a participatory approach, where a diverse group of individuals with migration backgrounds come together to determine the themes and stories that are meaningful to them.

• Destination Management Organisations (DMOs) have a responsibility to redefine normative ideas of “localhood” and represent locals with diverse backgrounds and promote more inclusive tourism experiences.

In the final part of the three-part sequence, WE*GENERATE: Places, Xavier Theret from Le Voyage à Nantes and I discuss how art can be seen as a powerful tool for encounters, fostering connections and tolerance. 

Listen to our discussion here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/67So3bFuK0zjBOPyBfQYrf?si=2iXaUkQUQ16bq7gR8aWs7w 

Takeaways

• Art in public space can reveal the city and create meaningful encounters for citizens and visitors.

• Challenging dominant narratives and engaging with controversial histories is important for creating inclusive and diverse spaces.

• Art can act as a catalyst for encounters, fostering connections and tolerance.

• Creating opportunities for play and connection can enhance the experience of a place.

May 2024

"Wherever you are is called Here,

And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,

Must ask permission to know it and be known."

(From "Lost", by David Wagoner)

So begins a piece I wrote called 'Unsettled: On Learning to Honor Powerful Strangers in an “Immigrant World”' recently published in the UNC-based academic journal CrossCurrents as part of a special issue on gardening as socio-spiritual practice edited by Johan Roeland.

The essay brings my continued work on migration, heritage and belonging together with my passion for gardening and growing fascination with the life of soil, both past and present. I loved writing this very personal piece because it allowed me to experiment with creative writing and learn much more about the multi-layered heritages of the land I grew up on and the land upon which I live now. The thinking behind it began during one of my Wageningen University Cultural Geography group's Covid-era "Landscape Conversations", where we each shared about the landscapes of our youth.

For people conscious and critical of their settler-colonial immigration heritage, the desire to forge and claim a deep connection with a plot of land can generate great ambivalence. Engaging with Robin Wall Kimmerer's reflections on indigeneity and migration in Braiding Sweetgrass, this essay explores the ways in which embodied and material practices of gardening and caring for the soil enable visceral recognition of both the urgency for and the challenges associated with decolonizing relationships with more-than-human beings that have been subjugated in diverse ways through colonial capitalism over time and space. 

#wapakoneta #ohio #shawnee #utrecht #wageningen #netherlands #territory #migrant #belonging #connection #colonization #indigenous #land #soil #care #homeiswherethecompostis

See the article here: https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/12/article/923591/pdf

May 2024

We are storytelling animals - we all make sense of our experience of the world through stories. Within the university classroom, it's no different - as educators, we constantly use case studies, develop future scenarios, share personal anecdotes, and give examples of what we perceive as successes and failures to make abstract concepts tangible.

But how often do we actually step back to look at what these stories we tell - their settings, characters, conflicts, (re)solutions, and the array of ideologies that underpin them - actually do?

As part of Wageningen University & Research's 2024 Education Design Festival, Alejandra Guijo Bermejo and I developed and ran a workshop that got university educators to critically reflect on the kinds of stories we tell in our classrooms and the impact they have.

During our session, called 'Tools for Revising Stories We Tell in Our Courses: Past, History and Heritage', Alejandra and I gave educators a chance to critically unpack some of the stories they tell and to better understand the heritages of those stories. They also got a chance to listen to current WUR master's students with connections to the Global South on how they experience stories told in our Global North classrooms and the limitations they identify of these stories. We wrapped up the session by physically diagramming our ideas about how we might better pay attention to the diverse experiences and needs of our students and consequently revise the stories we tell in the classroom in order to make them more inclusive.

Many thanks to our workshop participants for their willingness to address hard issues together throughout the session and to the students that contributed their recorded perspectives prior to the session.

Critically examining the impact of the kinds of stories we tell is far from easy, but it's an essential step towards decolonising and embracing pluralism in our universities. As I recall here the recent words of intercultural scholar Martha Montero Sieburth at the 2024 IAIE conference: "Instead of asking 'What is worth learning?', we must ask 'What is the worth of learning in this time?'."

Alejandra and I developed the session based on the 'Past, History, Heritage' exercise drawn from the Migrantour Utrecht intercultural companion training and published in the Roots Guide Educational Toolkit. 

Download the Roots Guide Educational Toolkit here for free: https://www.ourpocketstories.org/rootsguide

#yourstorymatters #transdisciplinary #storytelling #stories #dei #diversity #equity #inclusion #decolonising #universities #wur #teaching #learning #rootsguide

April 2024

WUR Science Shop's Art Meets Science project is bringing together Wageningen artists and university researchers to learn from each other and develop something together based on their diverse passions, talents and knowledges. I'm pleased to not only be a part of the project's coordination team together with Tossa Harding and Leneke Pfeiffer from WUR and members of the Platform Beroepskunstenaars Wageningen, but also to be able to partner up with environmental artist Kate Foster for these next months.

'Home is where the compost is'

The point of departure for this collaboration with Kate is our shared appreciation for composting (I'm making videos of the worms in my compost bin these days!) and first-hand experience with being immigrants in the Netherlands. We're inspired by Maria Puig de la Bellacasa's description of soil as 'teaming and teeming', immigration and sense of belonging/connection to the land, and composting and gardening as 'homing' practices, as well as seeking to critically examine constructions of 'native' and 'alien' plant species.

Thanks to Kate and fellow WUR Cultural Geography colleague Dienke Stomph gifting me a bokashi composting bin last Spring and to long exchanges with Vrij Universiteit colleague and theologian Johan Roeland, I began to explore these themes in an essay soon to come out in a special issue of CrossCurrents on gardening and spirituality called 'Unsettled: On learning to honor powerful strangers in an “immigrant world”'. The idea behind it is that, for people conscious and critical of their settler-colonial immigration heritage, the desire to forge and claim a deep connection with a plot of land can generate deep ambivalence. Engaging with Robin Wall Kimmerer's reflections on indigeneity and migration in Braiding Sweetgrass, the essay explores the ways in which embodied and material practices of gardening and caring for the soil enable visceral recognition of both the urgency for – and the challenges associated with – decolonizing relationships with more-than-human beings that have been subjugated in diverse ways through colonial capitalism over time and space.

I'll be keeping track of our collaboration here on my website, so stay tuned! Our final output will be ready in October 2024!

For more on Kate Foster's work visit: https://peatcultures.wordpress.com

January 2024

Curious about our 'Transformative & Participatory Qualitative Research Approaches & Methods' (TPAR) PhD course offered through WASS WUR at Wageningen University & Research? We made an introductory video for prospective and incoming course participants, packed with insightful reflections from many of our 2023 alumni! We think it really captures what the course aims to do. Check it out here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLp9idKTH7M

This annual course starts again in February. Registration is already closed, however, as we've reached capacity. If you're interested in the course, though, don't hesitate to get in touch with my me or my co-coordinator Anke de Vrieze to find out more and get on the waiting list for 2025.

Special thanks to our 2023 TPAR alumni that contributed to this video: Anna Roodhof, Charlotte Stijnen, Charlotte van Haren, Fleur van Boven, Jay Marisca Gietzelt, Louise Wipfler, Sarita Bhagat, Simone van Wieringen & Tom Kiel!

For more about the course, visit: https://www.wur.nl/en/show/transformative-and-participatory-qualitative-research-approaches-and-methods-4-ects.htm

December 2023

Are you an educator or facilitator looking for creative approaches to citizenship education-related content and teaching ideas on themes like diversity, migration, heritage, identity, belonging, and inclusion? 

Our new Roots Guide Educational Toolkit is designed for you! 

It offers you step-by-step instructions and ready-to-use lesson plans that can be used with teens and adults alike, in both formal and informal learning settings. Download our free 48-page toolkit here: https://www.ourpocketstories.org/rootsguide 

Designed by experienced educators and facilitators active in the fields of global citizenship education (GCE) and diversity, equity, inclusion and justice (DEIJ) in the Netherlands and around the world, the Roots Guide Educational Toolkit provides solid pedagogical structure and innovative, carefully researched content that enables introspection, sparks curiosity and inspires bravery to explore the complex political, socio-economic, and cultural situations we currently find ourselves in, and to imagine what futures we want to emerge. 

The Educational Toolkit draws on an array of creative methods and resources for large group, small-group and individual explorations to support not only cognitive learning but also socio-emotional and behavioural learning so fundamental to GCE.

Like our interactive Roots Guide guidebook of the Netherlands, the educational toolkit brings you, your students and participants through four steps:

Reflect 

• Connect with your own and others’ current and previous experiences and feelings relative to identity, difference and stereotyping

• See yourself and others through an intersectional lens - i.e., how society shapes what each of us can be/do as a result of the intersection of different facets of our identities

• Reflect on how you want to represent yourself and articulate this to someone else, and recognise how you represent others

Connect

• Recognise the range of identities and lived experiences in your group

• Share memories to spark stories of personal connections to migration

• Craft stories to (re)connect with the wealth of your own lived experiences

• Develop empathic listening skills to understand and connect with others more deeply

Explore

• Examine the differences between past, history and heritage to understand how the narratives we tell ourselves about who we are are never neutral

• Situate personal, family/ancestral and community experiences within a broader social, economic and political historical context

Share

• Digest and express key learnings from the Reflect, Connect and Explore sessions via meaningful and accessible forms of self-expression

Download our free 48-page Roots Guide Educational Toolkit here: https://www.ourpocketstories.org/rootsguide 

Purchase your very own copy of our alternative guidebook of the Netherlands, Roots Guide Nederland (available in Dutch), here: https://rootsguide.org/shop/guidebook/?v=796834e7a283 

The Roots Guide Educational Toolkit’s creation team includes: Meghann Ormond, Ingi Mehus, Fiona Hawes, Kristina Mau Hansen, Daniel J.Wurpel, Rehab Eldalil and Hamzah Kashash

The Roots Guide initiative is made possible by support from the National Geographic Society, Stichting Pocket Stories, Wageningen University & Research, and folks like you.

Like what you see? Then, please support us! Buy the Roots Guide guidebook for your colleagues, students, friends, and loved ones. Use and spread the word about the Educational Toolkit with people in your network. And reach out to us! We’re happy to facilitate training workshops on the use of these tools. We’re also thrilled to learn more about what great things you’re doing on these timely topics!

#rootsguide #reflect #connect #explore #share #21stcenturyskills #globalcitizenship #education #facilitation #yourstorymatters #migration #diversity #inclusion #equity #identity #belonging #toolkit #resources #lessonplans

October 2023

Prof Dolf Weijers and I will be sharing our perspectives on how to do innovative research

at the Wageningen University Science Cafe on Wednesday, 25 October. For more details, check out: http://sciencecafewageningen.nl/

Here's the organisers' promotional text:

A key first step in doing science is deciding what questions to answer. There are many more scientific questions than we can ever study and questions nobody has even thought about. How do we get to important questions to answer? Should we involve society in this process? What about purely curiosity-driven questions with no clear application in mind, should they be pursued, and if so how? And what about the questions that can only emerge from different societal stakeholders and science disciplines working together? If we look to the current practices in science, should we start doing the science process differently to decide on what question to answer, and what do we need to get there?  These topics will be discussed by Dr. Dolf Weijers, who studies purely curiosity-driven science questions in the field of plant development, and by Dr. Meghann Ormond, a cultural geographer who advocates for and experiments with new ways of performing science involving diverse societal stakeholders and disciplines.

This is a special Science Café edition to celebrate both the ‘10th’ anniversary of Science Café Wageningen (SCW) and of Wageningen Young Academy (WYA) (if we deduct 2 pandemic years). Both SCW and WYA were founded in the academic year 2011-2012. WYA is a group of young, engaged scientists at Wageningen University, which amongst other goals, strives to improve the academic system at Wageningen University and stimulate science communication to the public. Dolf Weijers was one of the co-founders of both SCW and WYA, and Meghann Ormond is a current member of WYA.

November 2023

Rowe, T. & Ormond, M. (2023) Holding space for climate justice? Urgency and ‘Regenerative Cultures’ in Extinction Rebellion Netherlands. Geoforum 146: 103868. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2023.103868 

This article explores tensions between urgency and climate justice in a climate activist movement context through the case study of Regenerative Cultures in Extinction Rebellion Netherlands. We argue that urgency obstructs climate justice through encouraging ‘whatever-it-takes’ mentalities that sideline justice concerns in the pursuit of action, and through propelling activist burnout, which causes climate justice movements to falter over time. We situate Regenerative Cultures as a tool used by Extinction Rebellion Netherlands to negotiate these obstructions to climate justice posed by urgency. Regenerative Cultures comprises an attempt by Extinction Rebellion Netherlands to ‘hold space’, away from the urgency which pervades the movement, in order to afford activists the time to experiment with modes of inner transformation. The techniques used by activists to ‘hold space’ for these transformations constitute a form of utopia building. In these utopian spaces, activists learn to acknowledge and manage feelings of urgency, thereby constituting a form of emotional and affective inner transformation. However, the utopian spaces of Regenerative Cultures are isolated from the rest of the movement. As a disconnected utopian enclave, the political potential of ‘Regenerative Cultures’ as a prefigurative vehicle for social change is blunted. This case study is testament to the difficulties involved in carving out spaces to practice prefigurative forms of politics in a context of planetary emergency, while simultaneously outlining the necessity of such spaces for cultivating the inner changes required to enable and sustain projects of climate justice.

October 2023

Over this last year at the  Centre for Unusual Collaborations (CUCo), we've been working to hone CUCo's values and mission.

As part of this, we ran a set of creative writing sessions for scholars from CUCo's Spark and Unusual Collaborations grant teams affiliated with the four EWUU Alliance universities (TU/Eindhoven, Wageningen University & Research, Utrecht University, and University Medical Centre Utrecht). The results of these efforts are now visible on the CUCo website in the form of a super-funky video (thanks for your out-of-this-world creativity, Flatland!) and a co-created vision statement that really manage to capture the essence of what CUCo is, what it means to scholars involved, and what it aspires to achieve. Check it all out below! And don't miss some of the beautiful haiku poems that emerged from the creative writing sessions below as well!

(Deep thanks to the ever-inspiring Carla Costa from Associação Renovar a Mouraria in Lisbon for giving me permission to use and adapt the structure of the manifesto creative writing session she first designed for the Migrantour network in 2021! What a powerful tool it's been for setting the course for both initiatives!)

The CUCo way

The Centre for Unusual Collaborations (CUCo) strives to nourish passion-fueled research, where scholars can find joy and grow as researchers and as humans. CUCo honours progress over perfection, process over outcome, eco over ego, and doing business as unusual. We are committed to fostering brave spaces that enable scholars to challenge the productivity-driven, competition-based, path-dependent individualism that has come to dominate academia. These take the form of collaborative, non-hierarchical, open, fair and inclusive approaches to inter- and transdisciplinary knowledge co-generation that are currently undervalued and under-supported in conventional academic frameworks.

We believe that good scholarship requires:

• Explorativity: Expanding our curiosity about and appreciation for the perspectives,  experiences and approaches of others that diverge from our own;

• Non-conformity: Believing that more humane and equitable forms of collaboration are possible and striving to stay true to those ideals, despite the institutional and cultural barriers that we encounter;

• Co-nurturance: Engaging in communication and collaborative co-learning practices that focus on building up instead of breaking down and listening to many instead of the shouting few;

• Creativity: Embracing diverse ways of knowing both in becoming attuned to phenomena and in the design and development of our research processes and outputs;

• Humility: Deepening our humility and reflexivity by recognising the limits of our own scholarly traditions, perspectives and skills;

• Trust: Daring to be vulnerable together, by sensing, experimenting, learning from failure, and staying with the trouble.

To advance these values, we focus on four concrete fields:

• Supporting research that brings together early and mid-career scholars with diverse profiles seeking to transcend disciplinary boundaries so as to contribute to addressing pressing challenges, in humane collaborations;

• Gathering and documenting knowledge on the process of inter- and transdisciplinary collaboration to advance the body of knowledge and the accessibility of that knowledge to current and future research teams;

• Facilitating and strengthening learning processes that enhance tentacular thinking and doing - drawing on multiple senses and modes of communication to creatively engage with complex realities - among scholars from diverse backgrounds;

• Advocating for institutional structures that recognise and reward more nurturing, inclusive, transparent and sustainable ways for scholars to learn from and collaborate with one another, as part of an international ecosystem of like-minded initiatives.

September 2023 

'The course... gives you the tools to make you think deeper... You will have to question how you've been looking at things before... It will pay off... because with every piece you write, with every piece you read, in every conversation... you will be able to really easily but very sensitively understand: "Ah, this is where this person is coming from"... This course influenced my work... I'm actually trying to create these moments that I had back in the course for people who are taking our tours or taking our our workshops today. So, I'm actually using [what I learned in] this [course]... to design for discomfort within safe spaces... to help people question what they think is true' - Fiona Hawes, co-founder of Migrantour Utrecht and alumna of the 'Concepts & Approaches to Tourism, Society & Environment' (GEO 30306) course, part of the MSc Tourism, Society & Environment programme at Wageningen University & Research

...

As a university educator, I'm used to working with students for a relatively short time - a couple of months for a course, a half a year for a thesis. In that brief window of time I have with them, I feel so incredibly fortunate and humbled to be able to witness and support my students' growth not only as students but also as human beings. That's what still motivates me to do what I do after all these years.

Yet, once students graduate, I don't always have the opportunity to see what they have gone on to do in their lives and which paths they have taken. It's even rarer still to find out from them what sort of impact the things they learned with me and my colleagues may have had on their lives later on.

So, perhaps you can imagine the deep appreciation I feel towards the alumni that wanted to contribute their experience, insight, time and energy to the 'Threads of Thought' video series. 'Threads of Thought' is designed to introduce prospective and current Wageningen University & Research masters students to what alumni take with them from the 'Concepts & Approaches for Tourism, Society & Environment' (GEO 30306) course and how it gets used later on in their professional lives. This course, which exposes students to diverse 'paradigms' - often for the first time, is taken by all MSc Tourism, Society & Environment (MTO) students to better understand how knowledge about tourism is produced.  Alumni shared about what their lives are currently like and what they feel they've taken with them from the Concepts and Approaches course into the real world. The perspectives they shared have been an affirmation that this course is doing what it's designed to do: foster an appreciation of the value of multi-perspectivity.

This video series was made by two MTO alumni, sound designer Kristina Mau Hansen and Rodrigo Machado Gecele Castro and developed together with me, the course's long-time coordinator. This series was made possible thanks to funding from Wageningen University & Research's MSc Tourism, Society & Environment programme dedicated to linking what happens in the classroom to real-life experiences in the professional world. A very special thanks to the MTO alumni featured in this series for their thoughtful contributions: Fiona-Marie Hawes, Jordi Vegas Macias, Neringa Kavaliauskaite, Maria Jose Sanchez, Eunice Wangari Muneri, Marisol Espino Penilla, and Joost van Heiningen.

June 2023

After almost 1.5 years of work, we at the Centre for Unusual Collaborations (CUCo) are proud to present the documentary '1+1=3', a film directed and produced by EX-AR's Gertjan Duijm and Florian Groeneveld. In this 25-minute documentary, we follow Dr Amir Raoof (Utrecht University) and his fellow 2022 Unusual Collaborations (UCo) grant recipients from the Structures of Strength project on a journey to explore interdisciplinary barriers and ways to overcome them. The film also features commentaries by Dr Iris van der Tuin (Utrecht University), Corinne Lamain (CUCo) and Dr Meghann Ormond (Wageningen University & Research). 

Watch the documentary for free: https://youtu.be/fr5KhV5ipuo?si=xssRcW1gItLby-FY 

Curious about how Migrantour has developed in 20+ cities and rural areas across Europe? Interested in bringing Migrantour to where you live?

Visit https://migrantourguide.eu/ to find out more!

As part of our Erasmus+ KA2 'Migrantour Sustainable Routes' project, we captured the Migrantour design and development experiences of our 7 project partners and distilled them into a comprehensive 8-chapter Migrantour handbook that can be used not only by partners throughout our network but also by organisations keen to set up Migrantour in and with their communities.

Our handbook offers invaluable step-by-step guidance on how to set up your Migrantour initiative, with: 

- Detailed explanations with examples

- Reflexive exercises and checklists

- Tour co-creation session plans

- Intercultural companion training session plans

- Digital storymap development instructions

#erasmusplus #migrantour #learning #participatory #GlobalCitizenship #inclusion #migration #heritage #storytelling #walking #guidedtour #europe #responsibletourism #sustainabletourism #utrecht #barcelona #lisboa #milan #copenhagen #ljubljana #brussels #migrantourguide

Project partners

- ACRA - CR Milano 

- Alter Brussels - Migrantour Brussels 

- Crossing Borders - Migrantour Copenhagen 

- De Voorkamer - Migrantour Utrecht #collectivenouns #gemeenteutrecht

- Nexes Interculturals - Migrantour Barcelona  

- Renovar A Mouraria - Migrantour Lisboa

- Terra Vera - Migrantour Ljubljana

Did you know that Migrantour is located in more than 20 cities and rural areas throughout Europe? Get a taste of the unique perspectives that our network offers in 7 different cities with our new digital storymaps! https://migrantourguide.eu/story-maps/

Our storymaps were developed within the scope of the Erasmus+ KA2 'Migrantour Sustainable Routes' project, with partners from #Barcelona, #Brussels, #Copenhagen, #Lisbon, #Ljubljana, #Milan and #Utrecht.

Each city's storymap includes highlights like our favourite tour stops and what Migrantour means to us, questions to spark reflection on timely issues, places and events that are part of our lives and shouldn't be missed, how we co-created the tours, and insight from our tour participants themselves.

#erasmusplus#migrantour#learning#participatory#GlobalCitizenship#inclusion#migration#heritage#storytelling#walking#guidedtour#europe#responsibletourism#sustainabletourism#migrantourguide

Project partners

- ACRA - CR Milano

- Alter Brussels - Migrantour Brussels

- Crossing Borders - Migrantour Copenhagen

- De Voorkamer - Migrantour Utrecht #collectivenouns #gemeenteutrecht

- Nexes Interculturals - Migrantour Barcelona

- Renovar A Mouraria - Migrantour Lisboa

- Terra Vera - Migrantour Ljubljana

November 2022

I joined the Centre for Unusual Collaborations (CUCo) board this summer! In an interview profiling new board members, I got to speak about ‘ideas we use to think other ideas’ (Strathern), multi-perspectivity and active citizenship. (And reindeer! Don't forget the reindeer.)

#unusualcollaboration #multiperspectivity #engagedcitizenship

Check out the interview here:

https://unusualcollaborations.ewuu.nl/2023/06/29/meeting-the-new-board-an-interview-with-meghann-ormond/ 

Check out the new Fresh Forward podcast episode where Anke de Vrieze and I were interviewed by the marvellous facilitator and mistress of #transformativelearning Neža Krek! In this #FreshForward episode, Anke and I talk about some of our initiatives at #WageningenUniversity like the Transformative Learning Hub and the #WASS #transformative & #participatory action #research #methods (TPAR) course for PhD candidates and early career scholars as well as our more recent work with the Centre for Unusual Collaborations (CUCo).

Among the range of topics we cover are the joys and challenges of nurturing #colearning, #connection and #innovation in university teaching and research practice; why we became educators and what drives us to focus on transformative approaches; our frustration with the #fearoffailure and how it's entrenched in university #recognitionandrewards; and the meaningful impacts of #facilitation and transformative learning approaches on the lives of our students, colleagues and collaborators. Many thanks to Fresh Forward for this opportunity!

Here's the episode link:  https://open.spotify.com/episode/1OVwLokOx4Jjxokxt6bDQr?si=6b48b1d00c6247ef 

June 2022

Roots Guide's official book launch was held on Thursday, 9 June (20:00-21:30) at Pakhuis de Zwijger in Amsterdam!

The Roots Guide interactive guidebook takes an inclusive, out-of-the-box approach to address anti-immigration sentiment in the Netherlands. Through written, visual, audio and experiential means, its guides with diverse migration backgrounds bring Roots Guide users on inner and outer journeys that enable them to revisit what they think they know about life in the Netherlands, starting on their very own doorsteps.

During this special event in Pakhuis de Zwijger's Designing Cities for All series, we uncover the story behind the creation of Roots Guide, and get to know the guides and approach: reflect on your own experiences and perceptions, connect deeply with the lives of others, explore the world with fresh eyes, and share what you’ve gained along the way.

Roots Guide can be purchased via our website: https://rootsguide.org/

#migratie #migration #diversity #ResponsibleTourism #nederland #migrationheritage #storytelling #heritage #countermapping #sustainabletourism #GlobalCitizenship #pakhuisdezwijger #pocketstories #wageningenuniversity #rehabeldalil #hamzahkasash #culturalgeography #transdisciplinary #participatorydesign

September 2022

Developing interdisciplinary research is no easy task. It takes time and effort to build creative, fruitful and joyous interdisciplinary collaborations. And the complexity of interdisciplinary research requires the awareness and use of a specific set of competences for which not all academics are optimally prepared.

Together with a great team, I've been working with the Centre for Unusual Collaborations (CUCo) since late 2021 to help re-envision its Spark and Unusual Collaborations grants as an individual and collective interdisciplinary learning journey designed to better equip research teams to take up the challenge of unusual collaboration and co-creation.

Now the time has finally arrived for us to prototype the new Spark journey! We begin Spark Phase 1 on 12 September at the CUCo Nest with a group of 10 fantastic scholars from diverse disciplinary backgrounds from TU/e, WUR and UU.

This week I spent a couple of days with the wonderful Anke de Vrieze and Corinne Lamain from CUCo and WUR to put the finishing touches on Phase 1 of the Spark learning journey. All I can say now is that it's going to be an out-of-this-world experience!

CUCo is an initiative of the Young Academies part of the EWUU university alliance (TU/e, WUR, UU, UMCU).

For more info about CUCo: https://www.unusualcollaborations.com

For more info about the Spark: https://www.unusualcollaborations.com/spark-grants

Interested in participating? A new Spark learning journey will begin in late March 2023! Join us!

#unusual #interdisciplinary #collaboration #research #academia #university #learning #wickedproblems #perspectivetakingskills #creativity #mindset #mindsetmatters #centreforunusualcollaborations #cuco #tueindhoven #wageningenuniversity #utrechtuniversity #umcutrecht

August 2022

We launched our Migrantour Utrecht guided walking tour this month! Check out our website for all the details: https://www.migrantourutrecht.nl/ 

Migrantour Utrecht is a one-of-a-kind journey through Utrecht’s vibrant Lombok neighborhood, and into your heart and mind. We believe that sharing personal stories offers valuable perspective and creates meaningful bonds between people. This is why we set our feet on the streets to discover places through stories and together pave grassroots paths towards greater social inclusion. Our guided walking tours and workshops create spaces of intercultural encounter with heart that foster more expansive understandings of cultural heritage, reshaping mental maps and expanding horizons on our shared humanity. This is how we walk the talk of the African proverb, 'the footprints of people who walked together are never erased'.

March-August 2022

More than one out of every three people living in Utrecht today has a parent born outside of the Netherlands, connecting Utrecht to places near and far throughout the world. The city is home to many people who came to the country as gastarbeiders in the 1960s and their descendants; from the former Dutch colonies; seeking asylum; and international students and ‘knowledge workers’. At Migrantour Utrecht, we're passionate about raising awareness about Utrecht’s migrant heritage and enabling our tour participants to reflect on how this heritage connects to their own. 

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Migrantour Utrecht is a responsible tourism initiative co-created and led by people with migration backgrounds that offers tours and workshops different from what you’re used to. When you join us, you’re not just going to be picking up new information – you’ll also be supported in interacting, connecting, and engaging in dialogue with people of diverse backgrounds. We challenge participants to move beyond cultural exotification and focus instead on the dynamic intersections that influence our identities and the role we each play in shaping the places we call ‘home’. 

Migrantour Utrecht is the first Migrantour in the Netherlands. Our Lombok tour was co-created together over a period of 5 months with Abdulaal Hussein, Dana Motlaq, Daniel Okiror, Denzel Diamanti, Jill Ahrens, Negar Rajabi, Norullah Ihsan, Oumar Barry, Paula Bran, Randa Awad, Sasha Jourd'heuil, Siham El Ouazizi, Samah Kareesh, and Yetunde Oludare. Migrantour Utrecht was co-founded by cultural geographer and educator Dr Meghann Ormond and social worker and educator Fiona Hawes. Migrantour Utrecht is hosted by Stichting Collective Nouns' De Voorkamer and receives financial support from the EU's Erasmus+ programme and Gemeente Utrecht.

To co-create our guided walking tour of Utrecht’s Lombok neighbourhood, we’ve spoken with many Utrecht residents, business people and community organisers to better understand changes in Lombok over time and its current reality. We’ve explored how over 500 years of migration have shaped Lombok, Utrecht and the Netherlands. We’ve reflected on our own experiences with migration and the ways in which our own diverse heritages link up with — and add to — the layers of heritage in Lombok. We’ve imagined, debated and defined the topics and places we want to include in the Netherlands’ very first Migrantour guided walking tour. We’ve learned from storytelling and guiding experts about how to engage our tour participants. And we’re now thrilled to be able to share this beautiful tour with you.

Watch this brief video overview of our 5-month-long guided walking tour co-creation process: https://youtu.be/ipoYzWwjXHg?si=B2W4FiM9-NzKZpS8 

Find out more: https://www.migrantourutrecht.nl/

August 2022

I had the honor to be interviewed by the very kind Liesbeth Idema from Wageningen University & Research for their Inspiring People @WUR column. Here's a quote from the interview:

"I’m a cultural geographer with American and Portuguese citizenship, and I’ve studied and worked all my adult life - more than 20 years - in various parts of Europe and Southeast Asia on migration, care and citizenship. As a critical social scientist, woman and immigrant myself, I bring my concern about how differently mobile people's roots, rights and vulnerabilities are recognised in the places they visit and in which they live to my research, teaching and societal engagement. Diversity and inclusion are fundamental to the work I do, so I’m honoured to reflect on these subjects with you. There is still work to do within WUR!"

Read the full interview here: https://www.wur.nl/en/article/inspiring-people-wur-meghann-ormond.htm 

March 2022 

Roots Guide is an atypical guidebook that invites you to deeply connect with diverse people and places throughout the Netherlands. And it's just been published in Dutch! Visit our site for info on how to purchase the book: https://www.ourpocketstories.org/rootsguide 

Our printed guidebook is for people who live in the Netherlands and want to get to know their country and themselves in a new way. Taking the form of an interactive guidebook, we invite you to undertake both reflective inner and outer journeys by revisiting what you think you know about life in the Netherlands, starting on your very own doorstep.

Sharing personal stories builds powerful connections between strangers – they trigger our curiosity to explore new places and revisit well-known ones with fresh eyes. Through in-depth visual and personal stories, the guidebook welcomes you into the lives of more than 34 migrants living in the Netherlands. Drawing on their own diverse perspectives and experiences, they’ll guide you to the places that have touched and shaped them. And, along the way, you’ll get reflection questions and travel activities specially designed to shed new light on the wonder, weirdness, struggles and joy that are part of establishing roots and forging community in this country we all call home, regardless of whether we have lived here for a few months or our whole lives.

The Roots Guide project is a collaboration between Ingi Mehus, Dr. Daan Wurpel, Rehab Eldalil, Hamzah Kashash and Dr. Meghann Ormond and is operated under the legal umbrella of Stichting Pocket Stories. The Roots Guide initiative is made possible by support from the National Geographic Society, Stichting Pocket Stories, Wageningen University & Research, and our wonderful crowdfunding donors! 

Check out our crowdfunding video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0NFvMykTeA 

April 2022

I contributed to the Pakhuis de Zwijger panel session 'Designing Cities for All - Together We Design: Navigating Barriers and Conflicts - Part 2: Exploring the conflicting interests, systematic barriers, and power dynamics in co-design' on 25 April.

Find out more about the session here: https://dezwijger.nl/programma/designing-cities-for-all-31

Overused terms like participation, engagement, co-creation, involvement, and inclusion, to name a few, have always been a matter of concern in designing cities. However, what does intentional participatory design mean? And why should we practice it? These questions are often neglected in discussions on designing cities for all. In this series, we aim to rethink the city for and by everyone by discussing who the designer is, what barriers and challenges are to shift from the user to co-designer, and how to make a true impact. With designers, researchers, practitioners, and policymakers, we will dive into the different components of participatory design within spaces, products, policies, and systems.

April 2022

Women and members of minority groups remain grossly under-represented in senior academic positions at Dutch universities, despite many institutional and national initiatives. There is growing awareness that current measures of good scholarship are sorely insufficient, or even inappropriate, to assess a diverse population of academics and academic roles. The 2019 position paper ‘Room for everyone’s talent’ called for all Dutch universities to develop recognition and rewards (R&R) policies that support diverse skill- and competency-based career paths, recognize both individual and team performance, and value quality over quantity in academic outputs. Yet diversifying standards of excellence does not automatically advance Gender+ inclusion and diversity in universities. New R&R policies must be designed to foster greater representation so that diverse competences are recognized — without falling prey to bias, whether conscious or unconscious, about how gender and ethnicity, among other factors, shape awareness and interpretations of a scholar’s contributions. A recent Nature article - co-authored by Wageningen Young Academy fellows Sylvia Brugman, Meghann Ormond, Janneke Pieters and Mangala Srinivas - offers eight recommendations for how to begin to recognize, address and correct for such biases at Wageningen University and beyond. 

Read the article here: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-01096-1

March 2022

Rural Migrantour is an #ErasmusPlus KA2 project that brings together Terra Vera (Slovenia), Stichting Pocket Stories (The Netherlands), Viaggi Solidali (Italy), Paths of Greece (Greece), LAG Svilengrad (Bulgaria), Foundation Nuto Revelli (Italy) and Jungi Mundu (Italy).

Its goal is not only to expand the thriving #Migrantour responsible tourism network (https://lnkd.in/evc7je6q) but also, for the first time, to develop rural guided walking tour routes that recognise and honour the role of human migration in the rich cultural and natural heritages of rural areas throughout Europe.

Visit the Rural Migrantour project website: https://sites.google.com/view/ruralmigrantour/home 

I'm part of #ruralmigrantour through my ongoing work with Stichting #PocketStories (the foundation behind #rootsguide - www.rootsguide.org). In this project, Ingi Mehus and I help to facilitate the members' learning process, supporting the development of participatory research and design skills and competencies necessary for the co-creation of Migrantour guided walking tours in the five countries involved. As an educator and action researcher at #wageningenuniversity working on the intersections of #migration and #tourism, I'm also involved in this project to learn about how partners develop these new Rural Migrantour guided walking tour routes.

From 3-7 April 2022 #devoorkamer's Yetunde Oludare and I represented Pocket Stories in Rural Migrantour's first IRL gathering in Kostanjevica na Kriki, a beautiful little town on the Slovenian-Croatian border at the very tip of the Balkans that's home to Jana Milovanović, the Rural Migrantour project leader and director of Terra Vera. The town - surrounded by forest, strawberry fields and vineyards - is located along the Balkan Route taken by many seeking asylum in Europe. It is also the site of the famed international wood sculpture park Forma Viva that has brought artists from around the world since the 1960s together to explore politics through art.

During our time together, I had the honour to co-design and facilitate some of Rural Migrantour project members' engagement in an intensive 3-day-long experiential learning process designed to develop empathic listening, qualitative research, oral and visual storytelling, and #participatory mapping skills that ultimately enabled us to co-create a Rural Migrantour route in Kostanjevica na Kriki itself.

We came out of the training experience with a real sense of connection to each other and, despite the short time there, to Kostanjevica na Kriki. And we also emerged from it with strong motivation to bring our learnings back home and make something really meaningful together with our intercultural companions for Rural Migrantour participants.

My deep thanks to all of my amazing fellow Rural Migrantour project members and to our local guides, hosts and interviewees for an unforgettable week together full of good vibrations! #europe #diversityequityinclusion #pocketstories