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Futures
are us
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Becoming other-wise
This Initiative
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​​​Since 2015, Open Up has been birthing curious events, transformative learning journeys and engagements for positive change, including radical health change in mental health-care, youth empowerment in refugee settlements, leadership & activism, new scientific research in connected breathing, making futures possible in the midst of systems collapse.
Futures Are Us, an initiative by Katrien Franken, offers the starting points engaging with education in other ways we know are possible. We are inspired to bring to life a form of education that supports the mental health and the well-being of emerging adults in service of the whole. We aim to catalyze new ways of seeing and learning how to learn that will develop a new set of shared values and capacities adequate to the needs of our time. ​​​
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We have started to spark this at University Utrecht in December 2023 where 40 philosophy students experienced an Open Up journey, blending philosophy, somatic movement, contemplative practice, and collective reflection. We are looking forward to the experiments, practices, rituals and creations that will come forth from this new endeavor. ​​​​​
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WHAT IF?
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What if education could contribute to the health of emerging adults with experiential dynamic practices?​
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What if our places of learning oriented away from learning about the world in order to act upon it, to learning to become with the world in- and around us?
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What if we can we open and listen to what is alive and emergent, and integrate it into our daily practices? ​
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What if we would spark more opportunities for people to experience the depth and mystery of life, to be in better service of all life?​​​
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What if we can we learn from “other worlds” to enrich all our worlds?
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What infrastructures are needed – in terms of space, money, institutional setups, skills and expertise, and more?
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Re-imagining
education as health.
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How do you imagine society could look like? Is this the best future we can build together? We must do better. Open Up is sowing the seeds of a new education because it is too late to educate in the ways we know how. We are re-imagining
education as health, and empower younger generations from the inside out, to participate in creating a wildly better shared future. ​We are stimulating a movement of openings; inspiring a collective shift on the edge of knowing, where young people can nurture and be nurtured by non-conventional spaces for learning differently than we know how that is in support of their state of inner health, and the health of the whole. Disrupting modes of perception, and relationship, and responsiveness by opening up the notions of the world we breathe, shape and create together. ​​​​
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What we offer
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We facilitate & develop inner experiences to open and expand life in a natural way where people experience a shift in their perceptions of reality; cognitive, intuitive,
and emotional. This is the place where new possibilities for living and being open up. This is where we also wish to co-generate new practices through theory, conversations, art and ideas.
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Open Up acts
as a portal
Every one matters
Other intelligence is needed
Learning differently is a shared journey
The call to revolutionize schooling is not so much an attempt to create a new world, as it is an invitation to lean into the mystery of the world that now is, and re-engage with it. – Bayo Akomolafe ​
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Open Up asks us to do this work.​
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We are looking for collaborations with universities and schools who are open to explore other forms of knowledge, and to investigate how they function, and how they fall into dysfunction.
