Welcome to Dr Guislain Museum!

Conference aim
The second Culture & Mental Health international conference will take place in Ghent, Belgium on 28 and 29 November 2024. This conference seeks to promote learning, discussion and debate around cultural interventions aimed at improving the wellbeing of people recovering from mental health difficulties or people in vulnerable situations. The focus of this edition is on supporting the mental wellbeing of forcibly displaced people through art and culture.

In a report in 2022 the EU and WHO call for support for the mental wellbeing of forcibly displaced people through art and culture : “People displaced because of natural disasters, persecution, conflict, generalised violence or human rights violations invariably experience significant loss, physical hardships and other stressors that can lead to psychological distress. A large body of evidence shows how forcibly displaced people contribute positively to society. This potential can be further enhanced by ensuring that they are in good physical and mental health. Therefore, according to the report, it is important to support the arts, as investing in the field is an investment in the mental, physical and social health of forcibly displaced people.”

This conference wants to bring together individuals from the public, academic, third sector and voluntary sectors, to share experiences, practices and knowledge about the importance and impact of the arts, reading, heritage and creativity on improving mental health, wellbeing and resilience of refugees.

 A symbolic venue
The Dr Guislain Museum is an obvious choice as a venue for this conference. Housed in the oldest mental asylum in Belgium, which dates back to 1857, surrounded by a mental health hospital. This museum aims to break down the many prejudices that still define what is mental illness and what is ‘normal’.

Conference programme
Our conference programme is the result of a call for papers and workshops that was reviewed by a programme committee. We have designed a divers and rich programme that covers a broad spectrum ranging from research projects to case studies. On top of this we’ve scheduled interesting keynote speakers for the plenary sessions.

Discover the Conference programme: click here for the programme

 Fees

GENERAL                 STUDENT

Conference Day 1                    100 EURO                      75 EURO

Conference Day 2                     100 EURO                      75 EURO

Full ticket (2 days)                   200 EURO                     150 EURO

Conference Dinner                  50 EURO                        50 EURO

Call for inspiring cases from the Global South
We are calling for inspiring cases of how arts and culture support the mental, physical and social health of forcibly displaced people. The projects have to be situated in the Global South, this comprises Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, Asia (excluding Israel, Japan and South Korea) and Oceania (excluding Australia and New Zealand).

Click here for the open call.

Conference chair
Bart De Nil is a PhD researcher between UCL Arts & Sciences and Information Studies, investigating public libraries as social infrastructure for creative health. For the past decade he has been leading developments in culturally mediated wellbeing in Flanders, Belgium and internationally.

Keynotes

Sulaiman Addonia, Thursday 28 November
Sulaiman Addonia is a British-Eritrean-Ethiopian author based in Belgium. His novels The Consequences of Love (2008) and Silence is My Mother Tongue (2019) have been translated into numerous languages; the latter was a finalist for the 2021 Lambda Literary Awards, the Firecracker (CLMP) Awards, and the African Literary Award from the Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD) in San Fransisco. His third novel, The Seers, will be published in the UK in June 2024 and in Belgium & the Netherlands in September 2024. He currently lives in Brussels, where he has launched a Creative Writing Academy for Refugees and Asylum Seekers and the Asmara-Addis Literary Festival (In Exile). In 2021, he was awarded Belgium's Golden Afro-Art Prize for Literature, and in 2022, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. 

Marit Törnqvist, Thursday 28 November
Marit Törnqvist (1964) is a Swedish-Dutch writer/illustrator of children's books with an award-winning oeuvre and a large audience far beyond the Netherlands and Belgium. In addition to her work, she has initiated numerous book projects for refugee children around the world. Next to illustrating, writing and book promotion, Törnqvist regularly stands on the barricades to give a voice to people on the run. For example, in 2021 she spent three days with an art installation 'The big loss' in front of the parliament building in Stockholm to confront politicians with the failed asylum policy in Sweden.

Nils Fietje, Friday 29 November 
Nils Fietje is a Technical Officer within the Behavioural and Cultural Insights (BCI) Unit at the WHO Regional Office for Europe, where he is leading work on arts and health, having coordinated the first-ever WHO report on the evidence base for arts and health interventions. He is also a co-founder and co-director of the Jameel Arts & Health Lab, with a focus on policy development and research implementation.

Sarah Linn, Friday 29 November
Dr Sarah Linn is a researcher based at the Manchester Centre for Youth Studies at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK. She has extensive expertise working with refugee and marginalised communities in the UK, Lebanon and Jordan using creative, collaborative and community-engaged methodologies. She has recently completed work as the Research Associate on Ancient History, Contemporary Belonging, a UKRI funded project which partnered with migrant background young people, Manchester Museum and Sheba Arts to explore the relationships between the forced migration of people and objects (2021-23). She is currently the PI on a British Academy ODA project Surfacing Zarqa which explores the intersection of marginalised youth, heritage and space in Jordan.

Manon Parry, Friday 29 November
Manon S. Parry, PhD, is an historian of medicine and nursing and exhibition curator, specializing in the uses of the humanities for health and wellbeing. She is Professor of Medical and Nursing History at VU Amsterdam, and Associate Professor in American Studies and Public History at the University of Amsterdam. She has served in formal and informal advisory roles for exhibition projects on health and medicine at the Mütter Museum, Philadelphia; the National Archives and Records Administration and the Library of Congress, Washington, DC; MUCEM, the Museum of European Civilisations, Marseille, and Rijksmuseum Boerhaave, the national museum for the history of science, technology and medicine in the Netherlands. Her current research project is “Human Curiosities: Expanding the Social Relevance of Medical Museums,” funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research and Special Collections/University of Amsterdam.

Organised by Dr. Guislain Museum, Iedereen Leest, Red Star Line Museum and Solentra. In co-operation with Universiteit Gent Social Work and Social Pedagogy and University College London Arts & Sciences.

Supported by The Baring Foundation.

On October 30 and 31, 2024 (Wednesday and Thursday) the third edition of Too Mad to be True is set to take place in Ghent at the Dr. Guislain Museum, titled The Paradoxes of Madness.

Madness - or psychosis as it is often called – is replete with problems, aporias or contradictions that can be subsumed under the term paradoxes. Such paradoxes appear under various guises and modalities, nested within concepts like language and experience, expression and observation, thought and perception, action and passivity. These oppositions may shift places, or may be seen to paradoxically co-exist in (mad) experience: mad reality can appear as flimsy, insubstantial and strangely unreal, yet also as more intensely real, coherent and meaningful than anything ever experienced; the boundaries of mad subjectivity can take on cosmic proportions, yet private thoughts and feelings may seem under alien control. Understanding mad experience seems to require a philosophical sensitivity and openness to the possibility of contradiction and paradox, whether as features of madness, or perhaps as cracks and fissures running through ordinary subjectivity and reality.

Program

We have put together a diverse program with five key note speakers (see below) and approximately 60 speakers with very different presentations and perspectives. You can find the full program here. 

All speakers, abstracts and bio's 
In this document you find all abstracts, all speakers, and their short bio's.

Tickets 

• Online participation:  € 20,00 (zoom links will follow later)

• Standard: Participation in person + lunch/drinks  € 80,00

• Psychiatrists: Participation in person + lunch/drinks (accreditation at the Dutch NVvP is requested)  € 120,00

• Students: Participation in person + lunch/drinks  € 40,00 

Tickets are available here.  For questions and more info, send us an email via info@psychiatrieenfilosofie.nl

Donors to the foundation receive a 15 percent discount, email us for the promotion code. 

In 2021 we held the first Too Mad to be True conference in Ghent, with as general theme Philosophies of Madness. In 2023 the second TMTBT conference took place which focused on the Promises and Perils of the First Person Perspective. 

Keynote speakers 2024

Lorna Collins

Dr. Lorna Collins is an artist, filmmaker, writer and researcher in creative health, based in South-East England. She writes about art, philosophy and mental health, in books such as Making Sense: Art Practice and Transformative Therapeutics. She also writes fiction and poetry. Her creative œuvre engages with her lived experience of traumatic brain injury and consequent condition of organic psychosis. She is currently working on a documentary film about this theme, and an Arts Council-funded research project ("A Creative Transformation") about the brain, trauma, mental health and creativity. https://lornacollins.com @sensinglorna

Being psychotic: madness as vulnerability, creativity and power

The visions I bring to the world of “Too Mad To Be True” are based on my lived experiences of having ‘organic psychosis’. This is a medical condition, which leads me to have continuous hallucinations. In this performative presentation, I offer my ‘mad’ visions, which take the form of a mobius strip. From one perspective on this mobius strip, we see how I am defined by a medical diagnostic system, which makes it very risky to describe my experiences because if I say anything at all, I run the risk of being detained. This has happened in the past. However, expression is what enables me to carry on and manage life. I fold the moebius strip over onto the other side. Here we see my infinite creativity, which allows me to cope and live within this system. I will show remnants from film, artworks and performance which illustrate this fact. We also see how they open up a parallel layer of reality, which endorses novel senses of identity, meaning, innovation and productivity. My hallucinations certainly enable rather than disable me, even when they are violent and destructive. This viewpoint is perhaps controversial, perhaps empowering. I will be asking questions such as: Can we ever get out of the medical model (and do we really want to)? When do hallucinations cease to be creative experiences, and become clinical symptoms, an aetiology, or signs of 'illness'? Who decides this? How can the two sides of the mobius strip be resolved? I will show how and where to fold and cross the borders of the mobius strip, until there is no difference between them, but a pure threshold of expression and creativity. Opening discourse and conversations – such as we have at this event – frees up the system. Let us kickstart, experiment and evolve with new practice.

Sofia Jeppsson

Sofia Jeppsson is associate professor of philosophy at Umeå University in northern Sweden. She started her philosophical career writing on free will, moral responsibility and topics in applied ethics. In 2018, when she gained her current position with stability and job security, she fully came out of the madness closet, and has since then published primarily on topics concerned with madness and psychiatry.

Sane fears and paradoxical madness

The word “paradoxical” can be used both in a looser colloquial sense – about things like inherent tensions, or unexpected results – and a strict philosophical sense. It is vital to keep these different meanings apart in philosophical discussions. Nevertheless, philosophers of psychiatry often fail to do so when they argue that some experiences that madpeople describe are too paradoxical to exist. Why do otherwise smart philosophers argue so badly about madness? I believe they are often driven by fear. They find it frightening to contemplate that people might experience radically different realities. To quote a psychiatrist I know: We are so used to sharing a single consensus reality, but psychosis patients make holes in it. Philosophers (and clinicians, other researchers and scholars) who insist that no one actually have such experiences, must explain why madpeople nevertheless claim that they do. Two radically different approaches come up in the literature: Some argue that madpeople probably have fairly ordinary experiences, but talk in a confused and highly misleading manner. Others dismiss both madpeople and their experiences as fundamentally incomprehensible – we should not even try to understand them, there is no point. Both approaches can alleviate sane fears; either by presenting madpeople and their experiences as reassuringly similar to the sane, or by keeping them far away at a comforting distance. I have previously shown that many allegedly impossible mad experiences are not, after all, paradoxical in the strict philosophical sense. If philosophers find such experiences inconceivable, it is due to their own mental limitations, not due to these experiences’ inherent paradoxicality. But what if some madpeople do claim to have experienced philosophical paradoxes? There are at least two possible interpretations. First, we could say that these people merely talk in a confused and misleading way. Second, we could accept the possibility that madpeople not only poke holes in consensus reality, but sometimes in logic itself. 

Mark Losoncz

Mark Losoncz (1987) defended his PhD thesis at the University of Novi Sad (Serbia) with the title The Concept of Time in Bergson’s and Husserl’s Philosophy. He accomplished part of his doctoral research at École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS) in Paris. As a postdoctoral researcher, he was the guest of the Institute of Ethics at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich. He is a researcher at the University of Belgrade (Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory) since 2011. His research interests include: consciousness studies, theories of sense of reality, philosophy of love of and philosophy of death, philosophy & spirituality, and philosophy & psychiatry. He has published several works on the Hungarian minority community in Serbia. He is the (co-)author and/or (co-)editor of fifteen books. His works are published in English, French, German, Serbian/Croatian, Romanian, Slovenian and Hungarian. He received the award for the best philosophical book in Hungarian in 2024.

Tender subversion, or how to believe beyond paradoxes?
I will start my presentation from the question of paradoxes –do they exist at all? I will examine Hegelian synthetic dialectics, Adorno's negative dialects and a philosophy of mysticism in order to throw a light on the possible connection between madness and paradoxicality. I will conclude that madness is paradoxical, both mundane and banal, as well as transpersonally “cosmical”. 

My lecture will have the form of a particpatory dialogue, in which I will let me guide by the following ten principles:

1. Conceptualization should be happening almost everywhere. As Diogenes, Umberto Eco and Slavoj Žižek say: even on the toilet. That is to say, we should be open toward the inherent conceptuality of almost everything. To be open toward "whatever singularities".

2. Philosophy is not free at all today. Unfortunately, today's dominant academic philosophy made peace with the System. For instance, philosophy was earlier much more free regarding form. Lucretius wrote a philosophical poem about nature and Nietzsche wrote Zarathustra

3. Philosophy should not remain narcissistically focussed on an alleged originality of "scientific papers". Instead, we should do philosophy with others. In the beach, in social media, while watching an art-work.

4. Accordingly, post-philosophy should be communalistic: commons cannot be consumed and destroyed – there is only common usage within the communities. When commons are used, their value is not minimalized, but even multiplied further.

5. We think and write and read to much. We should not leave all these unnecessary archives to next generations – these burdens. Instead, we should return to pre-Socratic fragments.

6. Humility, poverty and chastity are the Spinozan philosophical virtues. I would add tenderness.

7. Philosophy is free, it does not have to presuppose anything, not even nothingness or emptiness. Philosophy is philosophy precisely because it can be entirely radical, be without premises. However, we have so much pain because of not being empty enough of premises.

8. Let us always imagine how we could falsify, counter-argue ourselves -- in order to serve our ecstasy, that is, leaving space-time, our flesh, this body, this little boy and girl, ourselves, our Central Prison, the ego. But also to keep in tenderly.

9. We should always take into consideration the quadrants (Ken Wilber): nature, community, culture, psycho-spirituality. And even what is transcending all the categories: the One.

10. Despite all our pain and tragedies and vulnerability, we belong to a wonderful world that we must leave tenderly. Let every being be free and happy.

Sebastjan Vörös 

Sebastjan Vörös is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. His research interests encompass philosophy of science, epistemology, phenomenology, and philosophy of religion. He is the author of Podobe neupodobljivega (The Images of the Unimaginable; KUD Logos; University of Ljubljana Press 2013), in which he investigates the phenomenon of mystical experiences from neuroscientific, phenomenological, and gnoseological perspectives. He has (co)edited numerous articles on embodiment, enaction and (neuro)phenomenology. Additionally, he has translated several philosophical texts into Slovene, for instance, work by Damasio, Dennett, William James, Whitehead, and Varela and Thompson. Sebastjan Vörös is the head of the transdisciplinary institute Metanoia, and is currently writing a book on the philosophical and scientific work of Francisco Varela.

Of Snakes and Seraphs: Mysticism, Madness, and the Pardoxicality of Life

The title of the talk is borrowed from the now classic study on mysticism, The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James. Towards the end of that fascinating text, James speaks of the “great subliminal or transmarginal region” situated in the hidden recesses of the mind, in which “seraph and snake,” i.e., “classic mysticism,” or mysticism proper, and “diabolical mysticism,” or madness, lie side by side. In my talk, I would like to cast some furtive glances into this mysterious abyss. To begin with, I will argue, contra James, that this “great subliminal or transmarginal region” - the wellspring of both mysticism and madness - is not merely a distinct, deep-seated “mental level,” but signifies the phenomenon of life itself. More specifically, my contention will be that, in both mysticism and madness, we encounter the paradoxicality inherent to life - its ouroboric, circular nature - but that the two modes of being, at least in their “ideal” form, differ in how we respond to, and ultimately integrate, this encounter. Put differently, and more metaphorically, at the heart of vitality lies the ancient serpent-dragon Ouroboros, which, depending on whether its gaze can be withstood or not, can turn into a seraph - or a snake.  My talk will consist of two parts. First, by drawing on Francisco Varela’s work on the autopoietic and autonomous systems, I will elucidate what I mean by saying that circularity (recursivity, self-reference) is not only present in life, but constitutes its very “essence.” Above all, I will show that it is integral to both the constitution of the living organism and the constitution of its meaningful relationship with its environment. However, because living beings gravitate towards states of dynamic equilibria, this vital circularity, much like Heraclitean nature, tends to hide itself: it is cloaked behind the temporary stabilities it produces. In the second part, I will argue that, while both the mystic and the madman can be said to come into touch with this hidden, vertiginous core of vitality, the mystic manages to transform the ouroboric dynamism into the (groundless) ground of his existence, whereas the madman fails to do so, and becomes, as it were, fragmented in its ceaseless cycles. I will expand on this topic, and the proposed distinction, by drawing on the phenomenology of anxiety, befuddlement, and wonder.

Natalie Depraz

Natalie Depraz (born 1964) is a French philosopher. She is a specialist in German philosophy, phenomenology, and, more specifically, Edmund Husserl. She is a professor at the University of Rouen Normandy and an academic member of the Husserl Archives at the École normale supérieure (ENS/CNRS). She has worked extensively on the link between phenomenology and neuroscience and, inspired by both Husserl and Varela, she has elaborated a theory and practice of microphenomenology. She has translated, edited, and published numerous books and articles, in French and English, e.g., On becoming aware. A pragmatics of experiencing, 2003 and Attention et vigilance, à la croisée de la phénoménologie et des sciences cognitives, 2014.

A tentative microphenomenology of some schizophrenic disorders. The account of a psychiatrist

Organisers

Jasper Feyaerts (Ghent University), Bart Marius (director of museum dr. Guislain in Ghent) and Wouter Kusters (Foundation for Psychiatry & Philosophy)

Mad caveat
Although madness on this conference is mainly considered on a philosophical and psychopathological level, we cannot forget about madness, on a global, societal level. In the context of global warming and ecological destruction  we therefore ask all conference participants to be aware of their CO2 emissions and reduce them as much as possible while traveling to and from the conference.

Background: The Paradoxes of Madness

Madness - or psychosis as it is often called – is replete with problems, obstacles, aporias or contradictions that can be subsumed under the term paradoxes. Such paradoxes appear under various guises and modalities, nested within concepts like language and experience, expression and observation, thought and perception, action and passivity, objectivity and subjectivity. These conceptual oppositions may regularly shift places, or may even be seen to paradoxically co-exist in mad experience: delusions may be upheld with unsurpassable certainty, yet may also seem irrelevant for conducting everyday life; mad reality can appear as flimsy, insubstantial and strangely unreal, yet also as more intensely real, coherent and meaningful than anything ever experienced; the boundaries of mad subjectivity can take on cosmic proportions, encompassing the whole of the universe, yet private thoughts and feelings may seem infinitely far way and under alien control. As such, understanding mad experience seems to require a philosophical sensitivity and openness to the possibility of contradiction and paradox, whether as features that are distinctive to madness, or perhaps as cracks and fissures running through ordinary subjectivity and reality.

In the next 2024 edition of the Too Mad to be True conference, we aim to invite papers and contributions that explore the notion of contradiction and paradox in madness, philosophy and related fields. The following (non-exhaustive) subthemes may be addressed and discussed:

Act and/or affliction: madness is sometimes portrayed as an affliction passively suffered by individuals, yet it may also have—a less emphasized—intentional quality, more or less actively ‘willed’, brought about, and (to some extent) under self-conscious control. Reconciling, or at least acknowledging, these contradictory aspects of act/affliction might be crucial for advancing contemporary understandings of the development and recovery of/from madness.

Freedom and/or necessity: In first person accounts of madness, as well as in psychopathological theories, implicit or explicit notions of freedom versus restriction/determinism are often applied. Some accounts describe madness as a form of transgression, involving boundless human desire and extreme inner freedom. In others, madness is described as something which severely restricts subjective autonomy and freedom, determined by compulsive thoughts, voices and visions.

Self and/or non-self: alterations of selfhood are recognized as crucial features of madness. Some forms of self-experience—e.g., in so-called first-rank symptoms—seem to entail diminshed forms of selfhood, whereas others—e.g., subjectivism, quasi-solipsism, ontological paranoia—seem characterized by an excessive or exaggerated sense of self. In some forms of mad experience, these contradictory and antithetical aspects of self can even combine and co-exist. How can these complex forms of selfhood be understood? And what are their critical implications for contemporary models of so-called minimal self-disorders?

Pride and/or problems: In much modern discourse on psychosis, care and treatment, it is acknowledged that in addition to all negative aspects of psychosis as a mental disorder, there is at least a sense of making strength out of weaknesses, or conceiving a crisis as an opportunity for change. To what extent can madness be considered as something to be proud of (mad pride), something as an extra (psychological) power, and how can both its problematic and its pride aspects be accounted for?

Person and/or system: When we take care of each other, do we act within systemic frameworks, acknowledging theory and institutional responsibilities? Or should care take place on a person-to-person base? How can balances be found between empathic, engaged and personal involvements on the one hand, and professional considerations that take place within a broader social and economic field on the other hand?

Universal and/or aberration: In some theories (e.g., in psychoanalysis), psychosis is approached as an essential trait, common to all human subjectivity, but perhaps varying in the extent to which it becomes manifest. In others, psychosis is identified as something wholly distinct from normality, ascribed to only some individuals and/or occurring at particular moments in time. While the former view might struggle to clarify differences between mad and ordinary subjectivity, the latter might cover over forms of madness already present in everyday experience. How do these oppositions of the universal and the particular play out in theoretical approaches of madness? Is there a way to reconcile them, or should we privilege one over the other?

Literal and/or figurative: How should psychotic language be understood? Is it to be interpreted and translated as a form of metaphorical, figurative, or poetic expression? Or should some statements better be taken at face value, as ordinary descriptive and empirical statements? What contexts of reference and which linguistic approaches can be of relevance in clarifying differences between psychotic and non-psychotic language?

The nature of paradox: What is the philosophical and/or ontological status of paradox? Does it describe a mere figure of thought, a telling sign of confusion, symptomatic of the troubled philosophical or mad mind? Or do paradoxes actually exist in the reality? If so, are all paradoxes formally equal, or should we distinguish between different kinds of paradox (e.g., Zeno’s, McTaggart or Russell’s paradoxes)?  And if so, are they perhaps related to different kinds of madness?

Advisory board

Alastair Morgan (Senior Lecturer Mental Health/ Critical Theorist at the University of Manchester, UK).

Angela Woods (Professor of Medical Humanities at the Durham University, UK).

Clara Humpston (Lecturer in Mental Health at the Department of Psychology at the University of York, UK).

Louis Sass (Professor of Clinical Psychology at the Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology at Rutgers University, US).

Stijn Vanheule (Professor of Psychoanalysis and Clinical psychological Assessment at Ghent University).

In 2023 and 2024 Dr. Guislain Museum will organise with several partners a series of international training events in three European cities with a rich textile heritage: Ghent, Leeds and Tilburg. Although each edition will have a specific focus (communities, co-creation and making/makers) the red thread will be arts-based engagements using textile heritage. The participants of the three editions will be connected through the development of an art engagement using a textile source under the guidance of artist and researcher Claire Wellesley-Smith.

 For third and final edition of this series, Dr. Guislain Museum will team up with City Museum Tilburg, TextileMuseum and Arts & Sciences University College London. Together they’ll deliver the International Spring School Cultural Heritage & Wellbeing: Textile Cities from Monday 3 until Friday 7 Juni 2024 in Tilburg (NED).

For five days the participants receive a theoretical underpinning and are going to be guided in developing a wellbeing offering. The participants will encounter a wide range of inspiring cases where making is used for the improvement of the wellbeing.

The Spring School is to be delivered by a highly experienced team of experts who are leading in different fields connected to heritage, community engagement and wellbeing:

-      Bart De Nil, expert wellbeing, culture and community engagement, Belgium
Developed training programs and published several books about cultural heritage, health and wellbeing based on this own experience as a practitioner and researcher. Organised and delivered many international training programmes.

-      Bart Marius, artistic director Dr. Guislain Museum, Belgium
Is leading an internationally renowned museum about mental health that uses its museum grounds as a place of care. Their focus is on creative community engagement in co-operation with neighbourhood health centres.

-      Claire Wellesley-Smith, researcher and artist, United Kingdom
She specialises in long-term engagements in post-industrial textile communities across the north of England. Her research explores connections through textile-based activities that link health, wellbeing and heritage.

-      Petra Robben, City curator and director City Museum Tilburg, The Netherlands

-      Tamira Waszink, Program maker TijdLab City Museum Tilburg, The Netherlands

-      Thomas Kador, lecturer in Creative Health, University College London (UCL) Department of Arts & Sciences, United Kingdom

Is a material culture specialist with research interests in the health and wellbeing potential of (cultural) spaces, collections and their objects. He convenes UCL’s MASc Creative Health programme, which focuses on non-clinical, asset based health interventions.

Organised in Tilburg
From Tilburg, Stadsmuseum Tilburg and TextielMuseum have joined the Spring School as the objective is closely aligned with the policy plans of their own organizations and the municipality of Tilburg. “Art and culture with social impact must be perpetuated,” the Cultural Plan states. After all, projects based on art, heritage and identity can contribute to solving various social challenges.

Who is this training course for?

·        Professionals working in cultural heritage organisations (museums, archives, galleries,

libraries with special collections)

·        Practitioners working with heritage in community engagement and creative health

·        Students and researchers in the field of creative health, museum studies, etc.

At the end of this training course, you'll be able to develop a resource for a specific targetgroup or context, design wellbeing activities, make a detailed plan of a resource and present the rational of a resource to the group.

Practical information

Location: Different locations in Tilburg
Fee: 500,- EUROS (VAT excluded). Reduced fee for students: 350,- EUROS (VAT excluded). For this you will get lunches, refreshments and snacks during the sessions and breaks, course materials.

 All other expenses are borne by the participants. Attending the social program is not mandatory. There’s a very large variation of accommodation in Tilburg.

 Participants are expected to bring their laptop.

Maximum 20 participants. Places in the spring school are limited to ensure the quality and depth of the interactions and discussions. The organisers also aim to ensure a diverse group of participants.

How to register

Send an email stating your name, position and /or institution to: textilecities@gmail.com
You’ll receive confirmation. If your registration is accepted, you’ll receive an email with more details.

The invoice for the registration fee will be send to the participant after the confirmation. Your registration is only final after payment of registration fee.

The participants will receive in advance a briefing document with a detailed schedule of the spring school.

OUTSIDER ART, ARTIST COLLECTIVES AND ACTIVISM

From the ancient sculpture workshops of the Classical Antiquity to the recent Documenta 15: artist collectives have always played an important role in art history. From shared ownership to a shared ideology: collectives can bring change on various levels and in various places. How do artist collectives use art to fight for human rights? What makes them so extraordinary in the art world? And can the concept of an artist collective also apply to outsider art studios?

The Museum Dr. Guislain will host the 2024 annual conference and general assembly of the European Outsider Art Association (EOA). Welcome in Ghent!

PROGRAMME

Two-days visits through Belgium
Thursday 23 and Saturday 25 May 2024

OUTSIDER ART TOUR

23 May 2024

8:30 – 9:00 | We meet at the main entrance of the Museum Dr. Guislain (car park Jozef Guislainstraat 43). The bus leaves at 9:00.

Please be on time. If you have trouble finding us? Contact us on +32 471 68 47 39.

10:15 | LaM - Lille Métropole Musée d'art moderne, d'art contemporain et d'art brut, Villeneuve d’Ascq, France

12:30 | Kunstwerkplaats De Zandberg (+ lunch), Harelbeke, Belgium

15:00 | La Pommeraie and Fondation Paul Duhem, Quevaucamps, Belgium

± 19:00 | Back in Ghent

25 May 2024

7:30 – 8:00 | We meet at the main entrance of the Museum Dr. Guislain (car park Jozef Guislainstraat 43). The bus leaves at 8:00.

Please be on time. If you have trouble finding us? Contact us on +32 471 68 47 39.

9u30 | Art et marges museum, Brussels, Belgium

12:00 | Trinkhall museum (+ lunch), Liège, Belgium

14:30 | Créahm, Liège, Belgium

16:15 | Museum of Flint – Tower of Eben Ezer (+ sandwiches), Bassenge, Belgium

± 20:15 | Back in Ghent

International Conference
Friday 24 May 2024

9:00 | Coffee and registration

9:30 | Welcome and Introduction

Welcome by Yoon Hee Lamot, curator Museum Dr. Guislain

Welcome by Lien Van de Velde, director Cultuur Gent

Introduction by Thomas Röske, director Prinzhorn Collection, University Hospital Heidelberg, Germany: Collective Outsider Art?

9:55 | Bart Marius, artistic director Museum Dr. Guislain, Ghent, Belgium: Collective heritage: the museum as common

10:30 | Break

10:50 | Art studios and artist collectives

Luc Vandierendonck, director Wit.h, Kortrijk, Belgium: Sottobosco

Kate Adams, artistic director & CEO of Project Art Works, Hastings, UK: Personalising Environments for Creative Freedom and Purpose: sometimes art happens in the process

Monika Jagfeld, director open art museum, St. Gallen, Switzerland: lumbung brut

11:50 | Panel discussion and performance

Panel discussion: Can the concept of an artist collective also apply to studio work?

Moderator: Thomas Röske, director Prinzhorn Collection, University Hospital Heidelberg, Germany

Panellists: Michiel de Jaeger (production collaborator Créahm, Liège, Belgium) / Carl Havelange (artistic director Trinkhall museum, Liège, Belgium) / Marc Steene (director Outside In, Chichester, UK)

Performance by Vincent Obert de Thieusies, JP De Brabander and Dirk Bryssinck of Villa Voortman, Ghent Belgium

12:50 | Lunch

14:00 | Psychiatry and artist collectives

Monika Perenyei, Psychiatric Art Collection of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, Hungary: Dreampalaces: emotionally safe spaces and their filmic representation in the work of the Hungarian-American psychiatrist Irene Jakab in the1970s

Dirk Bryssinck, Villa Voortman, Ghent, Belgium: Villa Voortman: a meeting place in the city of Ghent

Lucinda Ra, Ghent, Belgium: studio visit

15:00 | Break

15:20 | Artistic Collectives and Activism in Latin America, in collaboration with the University of Cologne (Marileen La Haije and Bieke Willem)

Marileen La Haije, researcher, Cologne, Germany: Minding Arts: Arts-based Practices of Mental Health and Human Rights Activism in Latin America

Sofía Lanusse, director Outsider Art Fair New York, USA: Art on the margins of the system in Argentina (online)

Beatriz Liebe & Verónica Rodríguez, El Otro Festival, Rosario, Argentina & L’Altre, Barcelona, Spain: The Other Festivals. An ibero-american dialogue about Performing Arts and Mental Health (online)

Alfredo Olivera, Radio La Colifata, Paris/Buenos Aires, France/Argentina: Happening "colifato"

Florencia Rodríguez Giles, artistic collective Club de Artes y Ocios (CAOs), La Plata, Argentina: Artistic Health (online)

Santiago Barugel: Hospital Tobar García, Buenos Aires, Argentina: Magic circles

Larisa Zmud: Belleza y Felicidad Fiorito, Buenos Aires, Argentina: Food Tables: Community luxury, flavor, dreams, and desires (online)

17:15 | Visit of the exhibitions Off-Comics and Ikigai

19:00 | Dinner (EOA members & speakers only)

21:30 – 23:30 | EOA party

General Assembly
Sunday 26 May 2024

10:00 | Coffee

10:30 – 12:00 | EOA General Assembly (members only)

Ticket price Total Package (23-26 May): 130 euros

The ticket price includes:

• Two-days visits through Belgium: entrance fees and lunch included

• International Conference: coffee, lunch and dinner (dinner exclusively for EOA members) included

• General Assembly

The European Outsider Art Association (EOA) operates as an umbrella organisation devoted to the promotion of art and artists outside the mainstream art world.

With the support of