Welcome to EcoLit! We are pleased to invite you to our second practical project Endless Stories.
Sunday, August 3, 3 – 8 p.m. in Carlsgarten, Schauspielhaus. Free of charge.
In five varied workshops, we will explore together how stories, music and creative methods can support us in dealing with the challenges of socio-ecological change. How do communities deal with the tension between urgent calls to action and the slower, sometimes conflictual rhythms of healing and change? What creative methods can we try out together to share our experiences, memories and ideas and learn new ways of storytelling?
Our multicultural and multigenerational storytelling workshop invites you to share experiences and perspectives, discover creative methods and develop new ways of ecocritical storytelling together. Join us and inspire hope and change! Choose one of the five workshops below and register using the form.
Registration deadline – Friday, July 25, 2025 Click here to register!
About the workshops:
Workshop 1 – Ethnobotanical Voyage: A sensory experience through time
With Diego Gardón and Mischa Bach (DE/EN/ES)
Our workshop opens up new possibilities for experiencing and writing about nature and ourselves within it. As we explore Carlsgarten together, herbalist Diego Gardón invites us to
reflect on the complex relationship between humans and the natural world: Where have we lost touch? The food that nature provides us with today often reaches us only as anonymous, ready-to-eat products on supermarket shelves. How can we meaningfully reconnect with the living world around us and of which we are a part?
This shared journey through Carlsgarten, along with what you notice and feel, will become the creative foundation for your stories, poems, and texts. Throughout the writing process, you will be supported and guided by author and creative writing educator Mischa Bach.
Workshop 2 – Imitating Water: A soundscape in motion
With Anna Schütten and Denny Seidel (DE/EN)
This workshop focuses on field recordings—sounds we capture outdoors—and body percussion. We will listen to the soundscapes of Mülheim’s waters and explore fascinating sounds and noises. Then, we will try to create rhythms and sounds with our bodies that might match with the recordings we make. Using these field recordings and interactive play, we will create a musical piece to- gether and reflect: What do we hear in our neighborhood? How do we sound to ourselves and can we collectively make music with our environment and ourselves?
Anna Schütten and Denny Seidel will support you in listening attentively and transforming your ideas into sound. Participants of all experience levels are welcome!
Workshop 3 – Connecting to Peace through Voice and Sound
With Sarah Tsehaye and Senthuran Nageswaran (DE/EN)
Would you like to learn about your voice in a completely new way? In this workshop, we will explore how tones, free singing, and mindful listening can help us discover new ways and remember old ways to cultivate peace within ourselves and around us.
How can our voices play a role in shaping socio-ecological peace? How can sound support this possibility? In this workshop, we invite you to experience sound not only as something new, but also as something deeply familiar, something that we carry wit- hin us and can rediscover. By listening to sounds that hold and nourish us, and engaging in voice- and sound-based exercises, we will explore ways of cultivating harmony within ourselves and with the living world.
Workshop 4 – Tender Frequencies Mixtape
With Savsannah and Gabriele Maurer (DE/EN)
A mixtape is like a message in a bottle made of music: a carefully chosen collection of sounds that tell a story, hold a feeling, or carry a mood across time and space. And what happens if a group of strangers make a mixtape together? What collage of sounds and emotions will blossom?
For this workshop, we want to discover ways to reconnect the individual with the collective through a collective mixtape. How is socio-ecological reality making you feel? Do you feel alone? Do you have hope? Are you facing these realities with a community? Together, we will shape the mixtape with our emotional responses to the current socio-ecological changes through music and organic sounds and create a sonic document that captures and makes audible our feelings of care and connection and maybe even spark a new sense and practice of togetherness.
Workshop 5 – Sounds of a Garden: Exploring Fluidity through Plants and Music
With Julia Wildwuchs and Fernando Lyra (DE/EN)
Have you ever wondered how plants communicate or express themselves? What new sounds or rhythms might you create if you let the stories of plants inspire your music-making?
In the urban garden project “Carlsgarten”—a space that chal- lenges the boundaries between nature and city—this workshop invites you to explore the connection between plants and music. Stepping away from traditional workshop formats, we will expe- riment with intuitive, open-ended ways of creating that foster a sense of curiosity and connection. We will observe the diverse ways plants grow and reproduce, learn about the principles of queer ecologies, and experiment with instruments made from natural materials and everyday objects to explore the essence of what music can be.
Workshop facilitators:
