SUNDAY ASSEMBLY PRESENTS

MAY 19TH–22ND 2016

A CONFERENCE CALLED

WONDERKYTOPIA

Oudegracht 245, 3511. Utrecht.

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A CONFERENCE CALLED WONDER

MAY 19TH – 22ND 2016UTRECHT, THE NETHERLANDS

Welcome to Sunday Assembly’s 3rd annual international conference! We are thrilled you could join us for this rockin event – a veritable smorgasbord of inspirational speakers, deep thinkers and great doers!

Over the weekend we will endeavor to provide you with tools to improve your life, grow your own Sunday Assembly community and change the world in the process. Does it get better than that?

Oh wait, it does. Besides all the fantastic speakers and workshops, we’ll be bursting into song (a lot) and you can even join in our ‘Bonte Avond’’ cabaret on Saturday night! Don’t forget to take some time to walk the streets of our gorgeous location too, Utrecht is full of history and it’s ready for you to soak it up.

The whole weekend culminates with a Sunday Assembly Of All The Talents. The theme: Celebrating Life Together.

This is A Conference Called Wonder and a conference of wonder.

Dig in folks, dig in.

SANDERSON & PIPPA

SANDERSON JONES Sanderson is Co-founder and CEO of Sunday Assembly, and host of the London Sunday Assembly. A former / occasional stand-up comedian, he is on a mission to inspire people to live better, help often, and wonder more using the Sunday Assembly as his vehicle, and non-religious spirituality as his weapon!

PIPPA EVANSPippa is Co-founder of Sunday Assembly and music coordinator/leader at Sunday Assembly London. A prolific comedy writer and performer, Pippa recently won an Olivier Award with her pals at Showstoppers: An Improvised Musical (that’s the top award you can get!)

CELEBRATE LIFE. BUILD COMMUNITY. HAVE FUN.

EWOUT JANSEN Ewout toured the Dutch comedy circuit for five years and won 12 comedy awards. Depressingly talented he retired from telling jokes for money to think with the Dutch National ThinkTank, lecture at the School for Communication and Journalism in Utrecht and counsel the Dutch Supreme Court. He also chairs the Cultuurbord art foundation and frequently hosts the Sunday Assembly in Utrecht.

Thank you to Sunday Assembly Utrecht and the small army of volunteers for all the lost Sundays and late nights which they gave to making this wonderful event happen. With extra special thanks to:

Aafje HuninkElizabeth Schuringa Ewout JansenJasmijn PeskensLisa Verhaeghe de Naeyer

MICHELLE DE WIT Michelle is a cultural entrepreneur, actor in training and coach. Teaching social work students, acts in the strangest scenarios from security at Schiphol AirPort to organising theatre in Berlin, nothing is too crazy! Michelle frequently hosts Sunday Assembly Utrecht and is a key member of their organising team.

Michelle De WitMirjam Jansen-Brok Ralph DelsassoLisa van Schijndel

Evelien Stougie Marcel van de PeutSabrina Leidelmeijer David van den Bogaard

THURSDAY 19TH / FRIDAY 20TH MAY

THURSDAY, MAY 19TH

7:30pm Meet and Greet at Winkel Van Sinkel 158, 3511 AZ Utrecht

FRIDAY, MAY 20TH

9:15am Registration and Coffee

9:45am Welcome from Sanderson and the Utrecht team!

10:00am ‘State of the Nation’ with Sanderson Jones

10:30am Shamash Alidina: Mindfulness for Dummies!

Shamash Alidina is one of the world’s leading proponents of Mindfulness – he even wrote ‘Mindfulness for Dummies’! This globe trotting teacher will share the story of mindfulness and demonstrate tips and techniques that can help you and your community lead more mindful lives.

11:00am Workshop trailers 11:15am Coffee/tea break (provided)

11:45am Workshops in Breakout Rooms (60 mins) a) Intuition: Stop, Listen, GO! – Lisa van Schijndel

Intuition: What is it exactly? How do you follow it, and is this always a good idea? We will go on a journey in which we’ll take a closer look at our own inner voice, where it is seated and how we can hear it. Working with ideas like Theory U, we will investigate ways of listening and experience by doing. Lisa van Schijndel is a creative, positive life-treasurer that is always on the look for personal development adventures. Lisa is a clinical psychologist, songwriter and singer, a core member at De Universiteit and recently joined the Utrecht Sunday Assembly Team.

b) How Socrates can make you happier than Kanye West – Michael Plant

Most of us (including Kanye West) misunderstand how to pursue happiness and could be much happier than we are. Michael Plant will explain what happiness is, why the evidence shows we’re much worse at it than we thought, why you should try to change how you think and how you spend your time, not your objective circumstances, what practical evidence-based steps you can take to find more happiness, and why Socrates was right all along (even though he didn’t know it).

FRIDAY 20TH MAY

Michael Plant is studying a PhD on the nature and causes of happiness in the University of Oxford’s Philosophy Department.

c) How to become a Way Finder - Marien Baerveldt and David Bronstein

What are you doing to support your inner student? Your inner artist? What are you doing to support your community builders? Your teachers? Your listeners? During this workshop Marien Baerveldt will share what it means to start caring deeply for our own learning, and that of others. It will be based on experiences with Open Masters and The Wayfinders Kit.

Marien Baerveldt is a social entrepreneur who builds learning organisations and communities through hosting conversations that matter. Having studied cognitive neuropsychology and organisational sciences he continued on a road less traveled and co-created the self guided learning community ‘De Universiteit’.

d) Sunday Assembly Socialising: The important business of having FUN, in between Assemblies – Jeff Sargeant and Ian Joliet, Sunday Assembly LA and London

How do you build a community? Jeff and Ian will be exploring all the lessons learned from leading Social at Sunday Assembly - which smoups and activities really get the community buzzing. Jeff Sargeant is the Community Coordinator for Sunday Assembly Los Angeles, the bearer of the first Sunday Assembly tattoo, and has attended Assemblies in 10 different cities. He is a librarian by trade. Ian Joliet is the Head Of Social Events for Sunday Assembly London. He’s hosted Assemblies, sung at Wilderness Festival and visited several others. Ian is obsessed with music and all things social.

12:45pm Lunch by the canal (Sunday Assembly Chapters and friends, set up your displays)

1:45pm Show Us What You’ve Got! Network, meet like-minds, ask important questions.

2.30pm Plenary Talks (20mins x 3)

a) Mental Fitness – Kasper Van Meulen

Kasper van der Meulen is an author and storyteller who takes a no-nonsense approach to personal development. His workshops and lectures are jam- packed with interactive experiences, easy to use techniques and appealing stories that help you find the best version of yourself. Author of ‘Mental

Fitness For The Modern Brain’, the book teaches us how to focus in a world trying to distract us. Kasper studied with the “Ice Man” and can survive insanely cold temperatures.

b) Overachieving – Jeroen Van Baar

Jeroen van Baar studied Psychology and Neuroscience in Utrecht and Paris. He is a researcher at the Donders institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour in Nijmegen, was selected for the Dutch National ThinkTank and therefore is one of the most overachieving thinkers of his generation. Jeroen however claims we should strive for mediocrity instead of excellence. His popular book (“De Prestatiegeneratie”) looks at where our drive to excel comes from and where it can take us if we are not careful. Jeroen has intriguing ideas on his generation’s need to excel that are incredibly smart, reasonably funny and quite inspirational.

c) Voice Meditation – Yinske Silva

Yinske will be leading us together in a voice meditation. Her ‘metSTEM’ (withVOICE) projects range from dance albums, jazz and improvisation sessions to popfestivals, singing and meditation workshops. We’ll learn how to meditate using jazz improvisation, scatting, free vocal improvisation, dance and movement improvisation. Wowzers.

Yinske is a trained coach with a background as a linguistic anthropologist. She coaches performers but also project managers, administrators and organizers in arts and culture and specialises in community art projects.

3:30pm Coffee/Tea Break

4:00pm Workshops in breakout rooms – pick one of...

a) Bubbles – Using our personal space as a tool for peaceful communication – Jethro Rahajaan

The term ‘bubble’ refers to our personal space. Consciously or subconsciously we all use our bubble in a way that influences the way we communicate with each other. We’ll test some techniques to create more awareness of our own and each others’ bubble and how to make it super strong. Jethro is a dancer. He has taught hundreds of children how to toprock, freeze and backspin; better known as breakdancing - using dance to explore ‘proxemics’, or the science of personal space.

FRIDAY 20TH MAY

b) Impro – Freek Zwanenberg

Freek Zwanenberg is a classically schooled (popular) piano player. After studying at the University of Humanistic Studies in Utrecht Freek developed a beautiful personal theory and approach to improvisation as a way of life. Freek subsequently makes his living improvising and teaching his fellow man about improvisation before it is too late. Also, his name is Freek.

c) Secular Rituals: Death – Tim Lawler

Tim Lawler is an alive man, but won’t be that way for long. Death will take him, as it will take you but before then Tim will be running a workshop on soul midwifery – the art of helping people deal with their own end. We’ll also be thinking about how we can create new rituals around death in a secular world. Ad man, actor, Assembler and other things that begin with A.

d) The Life Course - Ruth Moir and Sanderson Jones

Over the past few months, Sunday Assembly has been piloting a brand new way helping people through the big (and small) questions through the Life Course. It’s based in on the evidence based work of Martin Seligman (using his PERMA model) combined with what we’ve learnt over three years of Sunday Assembly, join Ruth Moir (Sunday Assembly London’s Community Creator) and Sanderson Jones – (Sunday Assembly co-founder) – who will share the findings from our first prototype.

5:00pm Philosophical Speed Dating hosted by Lisa van Schijndel and Janneke Meijers 5:30pm Closing song

We will close the day with an optional guided night-time ‘Lumen Walk’ around Utrecht – learn about the history of this beautiful city, walking in the footsteps of monks under the famous Dom Tower. Sunday Assembly Utrecht’s House Band The Ameezingband will provide evening entertainment in Kytopia.

FRIDAY 20TH MAY

SATURDAY, MAY 21ST

9:00am Coffee/tea available

9:30am Welcome back! Let’s get singing...

10:00am Plenary Talks (3 x 20 mins)

a) Sing For Your Life – Emma Broomfield

By day Emma Broomfield works for The Choir with No Name - a UK charity which runs choirs and singing workshops for people that have experienced homelessness. By night, she runs the incredibly successful and fun Sunday Assembly London Choir. She regularly speaks on the subject of singing and wellbeing and has given talks at venues such as the Southbank Centre, the Royal College of Arts, Boston University (London campus) and Memorial University, Newfoundland to name but a few.

b) Innovations in Healthcare – Jos De Blok

Jos de Blok is the founder and CEO of Dutch organisation Buurtzorg, where he pioneers new ways of delivering home-based healthcare. Within Buurtzorg, autonomous teams of nurses work directly with their patients, in a community-based network free from management structure. This innovative model frees nurses from administrative burdens, allowing them to focus on the business of providing quality care. Buurtzorg works in ways that not only meet the needs of patients in their homes, but the needs of employees too — the company has three times been declared the Netherlands’ ‘employer of the year’.

c) Flexible Thinking – Astrid Williams

Astrid Willems is a philosopher who studied communication, philosophy, and fine arts. An entrepreneur and illustrator she gives workshops based on her flexible thinking (‘flexdenken’) philosophy all around the Netherlands. Astrid’s influential book full of beautiful illustration and impressive theory about flexibility that has Dutch reviewers (famous for their lack of enthusiasm about everything) waxing lyrical. We are honoured she was happy to come back to a bigger and better international assembly. 11:00 Coffee/Tea Break 11:30 Workshops in Breakout Rooms: (75 mins)

SATURDAY 21ST MAY

a) Be a mindfulness host – Shamash Alidina

We all need to allow space for our brain in our lives. In this Mindfulness 101, Shamash will share his top tips and tricks on how to host mindfulness sessions for you and your community.

b) Using the Sunday Assembly Brand – Jacqueline Gunn

Want to know your Trade Gothic from your Chronicle? Or how best to ‘lift pitch’ Sunday Assembly? Jacqueline and Sanderson will take you through all the things you need to know about the Sunday Assembly brand including how to answer tricky questions like ‘What does it mean to be radically inclusive then?’ and ‘Are you an atheist church?’.

c) Community and Healthcare – Liz Slade

Why do doctors keep people alive? Why is it better that to be healthy than ill? After 10 years in the health industry Liz worked to explore these questions. Now she works at Sunday Assembly as our COO and she’ll share her findings with us. Clue: being happy and kind is a pretty big part of it

d) How to Be an Improv Superstar – Kiki Hohnen

While she was studying psychology, Kiki discovered improv and has been performing and teaching ever since. She’s also used it in her professional career in a range of ways: improving autistic children’s social skills in a fun way, teaching people with aphasia how to communicate non-verbally, coaching singles to have more fun while getting dates, and teaching doctors how to communicate. This session will use improv skills to help improve your life!

e) Radical Inclusivity – Sam Brown Everyone wants to be inclusive, but what does it mean? Well, Sunday Assembly is ‘radically inclusive’ and Sam is going to blow your mind when explaining this post-theistic trend in secular philosophy and its incommensurability (Ed: his word) with classical identities.

Sam Brown launched Sunday Assembly Oxford and is Chair of the Society for Philosophy in Practice.

12:30pm Lunch break together

1:30pm “Town Hall” meeting

Questions and conversation with Sanderson Jones (Sunday Assembly CEO), Jacqueline Gunn (Sunday Assembly Chief Community Creator), Liz Slade (Sunday Assembly COO) and David Rose (Sunday Assembly Board Director).

SATURDAY 21ST MAY

OR Creative Walk with Janneke Meijers Janneke works by the principles of the Art of Hosting, which is an internationally used practice of building meaningful conversations. In the workshops we leave our work, our girlfriends, our social media at the door and slow down to see what actually lives in our bodies, in our minds. And then, we speed up. Janneke will be guiding a walk using these techniques. After completing her cultural and social studies in Utrecht, Janneke became a journalist, actress, coach and community facilitator for ‘De Universiteit’. She recently joined the team of the Sunday Assembly Utrecht.

2:30pm The Sunday Assembly General Assembly

Every year the Sunday Assembly hosts the General Assembly where Accredited members of Sunday Assembly Everywhere (our global movement of chapters) vote on proposals submitted by the network.

OR Finding deeper connection with Zlatina Tsvetkova

Let’s explore the essence of personal, real and human connection together. In a life where connection means wifi access and relationship means a match on Tinder, we have forgotten what it feels like to truly connect with someone, to create intimacy and share a moment with someone. In this workshop we will venture into figuring out what makes us truly “click” with someone on physical, emotional and/or intellectual level. Zlatina Tsvetkova calls herself a social pirate, organisational choreographer and forest witch. She ventures into every opportunity to find treasures, uses her experience as dancer and host to create spaces where people perform, connect and ‘dance’ with their environment and believes there is magic in nature.

3:45pm Open Space – What are the big questions on your mind?

How do you best appreciate and celebrate life? What’s the best way of creating opportunities to engage community? How can we recreate that special feeling when you’re standing at the beach and looking out to sea and everything feels magical? Or perhaps you just want to create a scratch choir singing ‘The Fresh Prince of Bel Air’ together. Yep, these kinds of things. Anything you want to discuss, now’s the time!

5:45pm Closing song For the evening, Sunday Assembly Utrecht invite your to participate in a ‘Bonte Avond’. This directly translates as ‘silly evening’ and we’re going to take that as the ‘Sunday Assembly Cabaret’!

Bring your best performances and skits to the warmth of the SA crowd!

SATURDAY 21ST MAY

SUNDAY, MAY 22ND Sunday Assembly of All The Talents 10:30am Morning Coffee

11:00am Sunday Assembly at Kytopia

Join our mega Sunday Assembly with people from all over the world. Co-hosted by Sanderson and the wonderful Sunday Assembly Utrecht. Our main speakers will be Esther Van Duin and Brankele Frank; Sunday Assembly Utrecht’s top speakers from their programme over the past year.

Esther investigates the association between traumatic life events, genetic vulnerability and psychotic reactivity to stress as a neuroscientist at the Maastricht University and was selected for the Dutch National ThinkTank. Brankele is a neuroscientist and a McKinsey consultant.

12:30pm Stroopwafels and Tea!

Join us at Het Gegeven Paard for goodbye drinks before we all head back to our own corners of the world.

SUNDAY MAY 22ND

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