#relating forests - Myths, Forests and Findings – the Closing Event

#relating forests - Myths, Forests and Findings – the Closing Event of relating forests

On 17 November 2025, relating forests held its last public event: an international online seminar under the title Myths, Forests and Findings.

For ninety minutes, from 12:00 to 13:30, artists, cultural practitioners, researchers and interested audiences from Germany, France and Norway came together digitally to take stock – and to ask: where do we go from here?

The project is a transnational collaboration, co-funded by Creative Europe. Three institutions carried it forward: TheatreFragile (Detmold, Germany), NOBA/Vitenparken (Ås, Norway) and Cultures Éco-Actives (Embrun, France). The closing event reflected this international scope – held in English and French simultaneously, with professional interpretation, so that all participants could access the content in their own language.
35 people took part in total. The presenting artists were the five core members of the project: Anne Bouchon and Anne-Claire Dromzee (Cultures Éco-Actives), Luzie Ackers and Marianne Cornil (TheatreFragile) and Rebekka Sæter (NOBA/Vitenparken).

What Was Presented
The event opened with a ritual – as all online meetings throughout the project had begun: participants were invited to show a plant or the view from their window. A small poetic gesture that established in a few seconds what relating forests had always been about: attention, slowness, connection.
Rebekka Sæter spoke about place-sensitive artistic practice. Central to her presentation was the concept of place – used in preference to nature or landscape – and the question of how artistic practice can become a process of becoming, one in which immersion and bodily presence are inseparable.
Anne-Claire Dromzee reflected on communication beyond language. Working in a multilingual context where full comprehension is impossible deepens listening and opens the senses – suddenly atmosphere becomes the message. To tell stories in the forest means listening to the invisible.
Marianne Cornil examined the mask as a threshold object. Restricted vision produces heightened attention, a permeability between body and environment. A participant from the Norwegian audience had put it this way: "Nature itself was looking at me."
Luzie Ackers drew a distinction between two formats: the active workshop and the receptive forest walk. Both generate resonance, but in different registers. Ritualized, receptive formats allow for particularly intense experiences. What makes the difference is the care taken in preparation and framing.
Anne Bouchon presented the evaluation of audience surveys across all three countries. Participants reported heightened sensory awareness, a changed relationship to nature and a wish to repeat the experience. Among children, a clear shift in storytelling was observed: human heroes gave way to animals, trees and ecological relationships as central figures.
What Remains
The outcomes of the project can be named: deeper connection to specific places, altered perception of the non-human, a new willingness to listen to the forest. Many participants came to describe the forest as an interlocutor – something that, for most, had not previously been a concept at all.
The closing event was an invitation to continuation, to networking and to the question of how these artistic practices might live on in other contexts. The recording of the event is publicly available: youtube.com/watch?v=2THlRCYtUbE

relating forests is co-financed through Creative Europe. Institutions: NOBA /Vitenparken (Ås, Norway) with Rebekka Sæter, TheatreFragile (Germany, Detmold) with Luzie Ackers and Marianne Cornil, Cultures Eco-Actives (France, Embrun) with Anne-Claire Dromzee and Anne Bouchon.