In this 2 day festival we come together to activate the communal spirit of storytelling to reclaim our stories, making new and old myths together. We are calling all creative urban dwellers, critters and city rats, nomads and cyborgs, queers and deers, looking to unleash their imagination and connect to a local community by telling their stories straight in a queer way.


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The Saturday program consists of a workshop series led by local artists, each exploring a different storytelling medium; sound, movement, writing and animation. All participating critters will have the chance to join 2 workshops (on morning and one afternoon session) where they will be led through exercises to co-create small projects together. We take to the streets, foraging for stories to weave into new worlds together.


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On Sunday we invite the critters back to camp for our Open Critters Studio, a space and time dedicated to continue your collaborations and co-creations. We close the weekend on Sunday afternoon around the metaphorical camp fire, with an open kufa where we gather to share our creations from the weekend.



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Places are limited, so register quickly! Please note that we will give preference to Critters who can complete the entire weekend program, but even if you can only participate partially, we encourage you to register.

We are small collective of queer creatives based in Wedding who care about bringing more creativity and playfulness into our cities by expanding the ways that we imagine our collective urban futures. The project is activated by jara, krisho, yv & miche, supported by our Wedding based community of queers, the Queer Spaces Wedding Collective, and generously funded by the Demokratie in der Mitte!

14th October

10:00

Welcoming and coffee

11:00 -13:00 

>Take back the town! Moving through urban spaces 
led by Jara Nassar

?Sound: Urban Field Recordings and Myth Hunting  
led by yv

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Lunch break
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14:00 - 16:00 

>Moving Images; metamorph your life! 
led by Krisho 


>Walking with Words; writing speculative urban mythologies 
led by Miche O'higgins 

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15th October

Open Critters Studio Session

11:00

Opening movement session
hosted by jara & miche

11:30

Recap of Saturday

15:00

kufa and Presentations

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Who are we?

Walking with Words; Writing speculative Urban Mythologies

Storytelling has followed the human species back through the ages, knitting community together by a stories ability to gather empathy and knowledge. What is the role of storytelling today in the way we form community?

In this writing workshop, we exercise our primal storytelling muscles, playing improvised oral storytelling games to lead each other into fantastical retelling of our urban surroundings. We will go on a walking tour of the locality, looking at familiar street corners with new eyes to scan for unusual happenings. It is a training of both attention and imagination, momentarily suspending judgement to allow for colorful worlds to emerge. We return to the studio with our pockets full of stories and through writing exercises we begin to weave our collections into texts. This workshop is suitable for anyone with any level of writing experience.

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Movement: Take back the town! Moving through urban spaces

Urban space is not random, but designed. Whether in the heart of a centuries-old village or along the streets of a metropolis – the environment is shaped by human hand. How does the built environment determine the way bodies move through it? How are bodies conditioned by the spaces around them, and how can this movement be queered?

This workshop will build on methods of theater, giving space to reconnect to the body as a physical being, and examine how our bodies move through the space around it, reclaiming and re-framing.

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Moving Images; metamorph your life!

Metamorphosis always played important roles in mythologies since ancient times. Stories are filled with transformations as expression of inner change, growth or progress. Often morally strictly laid out as curse or blessing. And as usual it becomes really interesting once you realize it's not that binary at all...

In this Workshop we play "what-if"; we experiment with our perceptions and evaluations (judgments?) and develop digital animation loops, (kinda like gif-files).
we'll staring doodling on pen/paper and then use 'rough animator' on anroid/ios devices for the animation.

Inspirited by the Saturday workshops or personal troubles-topics, the participants conjure up abstract or symbolic objects, that transform into objects of resolution. Noone has to share their stories or symbolism this is part of your personal myth and we work in a safe space!
After the workshop we can stay to hang out, chit-chat and enjoy the conclusion wondrous weekend.

Please keep in mind:
If possible bring an android/ios compatible phone or tablet with you. Of course you can just use pen/paper too and we'll try to make a flip book.
As we all know: what appears to the 'mundane' like a hairball can be the most fabulous talking elephant. So don't be shy about you drawing skills, we work with symbols.

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Sound: Urban Field Recordings and Myth Hunting

The world is full of sounds and noises that often tell a story if we could only take the time to listen. In this workshop we want to go wild in our immediate surroundings and discover the sonic landscapes that unfold in front of us. We will take a moment to listen and identify sources, co-create and define the sonic sea of sounds buzzing in our ears and transform them into small pieces we want to take with us and show to the rest of the world.


Requirements: bring your phone or any device that can record sound, any headphones & if possible, a laptop. We will use the open source software Reaper, so please download it beforehand for the workshop from here: https://www.reaper.fm/download.php . If you need technical support with installing the software, please reach out to us via our email: urbancritters @ protonmail.com

>Workshop descriptions

The stories we tell matter. They are all around us, shaping our lives as we shape them. Each story is a personal mythology that wraps through space and time, helping us to make sense of our urban habitat as we experience it today.

>Program

Instagram: @urbancritters_festival

Email: urbancritters @ protonmail . com

>Get in touch