On Thursday April 10, 2025, the symposium Compos(t)ing – Regenerative Creative Practices unfolded at Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam. The ATD Lectorate co-organized the symposium. The conference was an interdisciplinary collaboration between the ATD Lectorate, CARADT, WdKA, HKU, and Nieuwe Instituut, with presentations by ATD Lectorate researchers: Anthony Heidweiller, Dwayne Toemere, Emilie Gallier, Jay-J Taukave and Laura Cull Ó Maoilearca. 

The event brought together a transdisciplinary network of artists, designers, researchers, and educators to collectively explore how creative practice can contribute to cultivating a regenerative culture and economy — one in which both human and more-than-human life can flourish. Fully booked, the symposium was met with broad interest, showing the resonance and urgency of the topic. 

Step into the heart of Compos(t)ing Regenerative Creative Practices, a one-day interdisciplinary symposium that brought together passionate educators, scholars, artists, and designers from Willem de Kooning Academy, HKU, ATD Lectorate – Academy of Theatre and Dance, Centre of Applied Research for Art, Design and Technology, and Nieuwe Instituut.

Practicing Regeneration, together
Through a rich program of plenary conversations, thematic work sessions, and embodied experiences, the symposium investigated what regenerative creative practice means across scales, locations, and disciplines. Key questions that guided the day included:

• What are the elephants in the room?
• Which relationships — in education, creative practices and broader systems — need to be broken, and which revitalized?
• How can creative practice, with its aesthetic, material, political and transformative capacities, contribute to systemic regeneration? 

 Discussions and workshops centered on three interwoven themes:

Creative Practices, Regenerative Economies & Human-Inclusive Ecosystems, and Education & Didactics. 

A program of encounters: sensing, sharing, reflecting
After an embodied start by Anthony Heidweiller and Jay-J Taukave, the day opened with a plenary conversation between institutional representatives, including ATD Lector Laura Cull Ó Maoilearca and researcher Dwayne Toemere who emphasised the importance of social justice and Indigenous perspectives in thinking about regeneration.

Participants then dispersed into workgroup sessions — both indoors and outdoors — engaging in embodied explorations, artistic- and design-based discussions, and speculative actions. 

Each CARADT research group — Cultural and Creative Industries, Situated Art, Design and Technology, and Regenerative Art and Design — contributed to the program. Workgroups included the following sessions by researchers from CARADT (alongside other contributors): 

• Belonging Matters with Willemien Ippel (The Linen Project) and Irene Fortuyn (Hand & Land), moderated by Annemarie Piscaer (CARADT Situated Art, Design, and Technology)
• Cross-Pollination and Collective Action with Wander Eikelboom and Bas van den Hurk (CARADT Cultural and Creative Industries) and Juha van ‘t Zelfde (ATD)
• Practising Living Systems by Judith van den Boom (Central Saint Martins UAL) and Risk Hazekamp (CARADT Regenerative Art and Design)
• Wild Pedagogies: Being at Home in the World, an outdoor session by Ruben Jacobs (HKU Art and Economics) and Annemarie Piscaer (CARADT Situated Art, Design, and Technology)
• Living Material Practice with Michaela Davidová (CARADT Regenerative Art and Design / Material Incubator Lab), Kas Houthuijs and Honey Jones-Hughes (WdKA) and Shirley Niemans (BioLab HKU)

Keynote: learning to see the living world anew 
In her closing reflection, keynote speaker Estelle Zhong Mengual drew from her latest publication Leren Kijken, proposed new ways of looking at the representation of the living world in art, drawing on the tools of environmental humanities and the most contemporary natural sciences. 

The day concluded with an Embodied End, grounding reflections in the body, led once more by Anthony Heidweiller and Jay-J Taukave. 

 From dialogue to compost
Rather than functioning as a traditional conference, Compos(t)ing offered itself as fertile ground for questioning, testing, and digesting ideas. In a collective Compos(t)ing Session, participants shared emerging insights and entangled experiences, to help to connect and digest experiences and insights from the program. 

Rounding off a sublime and validating interdisciplinary collaboration between:

• Willem de Kooning Academy,
• HKU University of the Arts Utrecht,
• ATD Lectorate,
• CARADT Centre for Applied Research in Art, Design and Technology,
• Nieuwe Instituut

The Compos(t)ing: Regenerative Creative Practices symposium on Thursday, April 10, was a living success. Nurtured by passionate contributors and participants, the sold-out event left a lasting and impactful imprint. Thank you to all contributors, presenters, and participants for cultivating this vibrant, necessary exchange.