#relating forests - Workshop Masks, Human and Forests - resumee

#relating forests - Workshop Masks, Human and Forest - resumee

On 19 July 2025, we organised a four-hour workshop in the Teutoburg Forest with 20 young people from the Detmold region – a day on which we explored the relationship between humans and nature together. This workshop is part of a larger project – ‘relating forests’, our first EU project.

This is how the great team came together: Rebecca Sæter from Norway, Ann-Claire Dromsee from France, Marianne Cornil and Luzie Ackers from TheatreFragile, and Susanne Haferbeck from Rolfschen Hof (NABU) were all there. We are very happy: the workshop was very well attended and enriched us all!

The focus was on experiencing the more-than-human. We focused on the relationship between humans and nature and explored it with our bodies and senses.

Through targeted exercises and games, we came into direct contact with trees, plants and small forest treasures – smelling, feeling, listening. These sensory encounters opened up space to question our ideas. What names do we have for the forest and what do we associate with nature and being in nature?

Poems and stories from different countries inspired our perspectives and our being in the forest. Multilingualism created spaces of resonance in which perspectives broadened and diversity was taken for granted.

With the mask, we were able to realign our view of nature – the more-than-human. The mask gives us the opportunity to focus intensely, we can perceive both small and large connections more clearly, and hearing also comes to the fore in a different way. An interesting tool to support perception.

The feedback was varied, but all of it testified to a new feeling of connection with the forest; amazing at what we discover when we look closely – and how the exercises, games and masks can help us push boundaries, gain new perspectives and connect.

The project was sponsored by: Stiftung Standortsicherung, Lions Club Detmold, Sparkasse Detmold and Creative Europe in cooperation with Rolfschen Hof, NABU.