The Foyer
serves as a cross-sectoral platform, a space for exchange, self-reflection and discussion beyond the artistic field. It hosts various Brussels-based organisations working on different fronts than the festival but that the team identifies with in terms of values, priorities, ways of working and society-relevancy. These organisations, individuals, collectives and associations wish to share their vision, approach of sustainability, values and priorities in their own formats.
FOYER PROGRAM (Beursschouwburg Café) FREE
16:00 – 17:30 An introduction to mindfulness: Mindfulness by Céline (full)
18:30 – 20:30 Listening to Tea and Tasting Music by Les Feuilles Vertes & Enkephalin (full)
workshop 1
Mindfulness by Céline
Mindfulness is something a lot of people talk about now. A lot of people seek another way to live with all the stress and anxiety going around the world right now.
But what is Mindfulness exactly and how do we practise it?
In this 1.5 hour workshop you’ll get an introduction to what it is, but the most important part will be practising together. Because Mindfulness is better caught than taught.
You’ll be able to ask your questions or just share your experience with Céline, a certified mindfulness trainer. Céline gives 8 and 12 week courses to small groups, she guides people in private sessions, she organises moon ceremonies and is very interested in healing racial trauma through body-centered practices.
You’re welcome to join. And even if you’re an advanced mindfulness practitioner, you can come and have a nice moment of practice in a group.
Celine, a passionate and certified mindfulness guide, worked for several years as a social worker. Finding a balanced life in social work is not always easy and she discovered meditation as a form of self-care. The causes of her unhappiness were clearer, but she also quickly realized that it is a lifelong learning process.
With this positive change, she decided to train and become a guide. She started guiding meditation classes for refugees and women’s circles. Having worked with many activists, she is also very interested in the connection between mindfulness and social change, but also in embodied activism and how we can clarify the importance of self-care in social movements.
Being half Congolese and Polish, she is fascinated by somatic abolitionism and how to change unconscious biases around race with body centred tools.
workshop 2
Tea tasting and listening to music by Les Feuilles Vertes & Enkephalin
Part 1:
While infusing and sharing a series of carefully selected teas, Les Feuilles Vertes are invited to give a workshop/conversation about Chinese tea, its basic principles, production specificities, market politics and overall spirit. The team wishes to share their informed and positioned values when it comes to this beverage and its existence in the current world which relates to traceability, cultural history (and appropriation) and fair economies.
Part 2:
After this exchange, the participants will focus on the sensorial pleasure and collectively taste some tea while having the pleasure to listen to live music by the brilliant sound artist & tea geek Enkephalin.
*the talk will be given in French but people will be available to translate to English (and, team and music are their own language…)
About Les Feuilles Vertes:
In 2003, San Mao and Li Ping founded the non-profit organisation Les Feuilles Vertes. Based in Brussels, the organization aims at transmitting knowledge around the 6 families of Chinese tea, its production, its market, its values and spirit. Thereby they hope to share tools to identify a quality tea and evaluate a fair price for it, based on a set of objective criteria. Bedside the transmission work, the team travels to China every year for 4 months to work in close collaborations with small scale producers, choose and select the most lively, qualitative and attractive teas for their organization and for a few shops in Europe.
With their label and concept, “From leaf to cup”, Les Feuilles Vertes shares their main values and ways of working, paying particular attention to the traceability of the tea, closely following each stage of production and their conditions. Since 2014 they have also produced their own tea: a dark tea, Pu Er, from a hundred-year-old tree. They have also created a series of eight teas guaranteed pesticide-free and available for sale, as well as a podcast on Chinese tea available online.
About Enkephalin:
Enkephalin is a class of neurotransmitters released by neurons when a painful sensation is too intense. From this point of view, any music could relieve the pain it corresponds to.
Thomas Cordy alias Enkephalin treats the sound in this state of mind, he mistreats it, denatures it, to give it organic basses and hypnotic melodies. Enkephalin has shared stages with Apashe, R.O, Otist Reading, Nanaka, Pneumotracks, Altarba, Spankbass, Sparkling Bits, Dirtyphonics, Culprate or Opiuo. He also happens to be a chinese tea expert (which has deeply inspired some of his tracks) and a team member of Les Feuilles Vertes.
