In Heterotopia Tour you are going to meet people from different countries, of various ages, interests and habits. A stable characteristic between all these people is their need for constant learning and experimentation. After the first days of ice breaking people come closer, start to have more out of the context discussions, and open up to the people around. It is at that time that their personal interests, hobbies, activities and practices come to light. People understand that they have a lot of things in common or they can learn a great deal from the others.

The exchange of knowledge is the reasonable continuity of things. The next thing you see is people grab the violin for the first time, make weird yoga poses, have walks to explore the herbs around or discuss about permaculture. It is not weird to see a game from a specific country being played by others each day or a combined recipe being made while exchanging cooking tips. There were days that all participants after a big day, were gathering in a specific spot of the “endless” nature around, and were spending hours discussing about topics that emerged from the activities of that day. It is beautiful to see people that have more knowledge about a specific topic to be willing to talk about it and people that know nothing or less to be passionate to hear.

Something that happened in the middle of Heterotopia Tour in France without being organized is the arrangement of mini workshops among the participants. The workshops were either for one or more persons. The participants wrote in small papers the title of a workshop with a small description and the duration of it. For example: Anime Drawing, Learn to design some head poses, 45’ from Paul. On the back side of the paper the participants that were interested for the specific seminar-workshop noted their names. After two or three days the coordinator of the seminar gathered the names and organized the seminars. Of course, great help for the arrangement of the various workshops was the existence of a combined table of the daily routine where the workshops-place and time- were written.

These knowledge exchange activities were of a great importance due to the fact that happened as a need of the participants to come closer to others and experiment with interesting staff and not because of the official program of the Tour. It is at the end of all, the aim of the Heterotopia Tour, people from different places to come together and understand that they all have the same needs, concerns and impulses to experiment and live.

Olympia

~DISCUSSION~~