Welcome in the temporary BOK classroom. You can come listen and learn from different ‘bodies of knowledge’, people from the neighborhood or elsewhere in the city who will share life-knowledge that can nurture a more just society. This public program is the result of a two-week workshop with the BOK team and a group of local neighbours, artists, activists, community workers. Together, they searched for invisibilized knowledge in the city they live in.

PROGRAMME BOK LEARNING DAYS*
*Programme subject to changes due to life circumstances.

FRIDAY 17/05
15:30 – BOK Café
16:00 – Surprise session
17:00 – Lidiia: New life for old clothes
18:00 – Lieven: Marathon as a (life) philosophy
19:00 – Amirah: Self-love in motion : a dance to inner freedom

SATURDAY 18/05
13:30 – BOK Café
14:00 – Simon: Rewilding our way of moving
15:00 – Alaa: I am Alaa, I am myself
16:00 – Jürgen & Martha: Love beyond borders
17:00 – Sabreen: How to be a dreamer in Gaza (from a woman’s perspective)

FRIDAY 24/05
15:30 – BOK Café
16:00 – Phil & Delphine: To live as a society, before we forget
17:00 – Tom: “Chicken talk” or how to connect with nature

SATURDAY 25/05
13:30 – BOK Café
14:00 – Trui & Fleur: “Allez vous faire aimer ” (go let yourself be loved)
15:00 – Stefke
16:00 – Halima: How to connect different cultures
17:00 – Sam-Luan: Poems from the mind of a teenager

Sessions in various languages – We translate for each other

BOK (bodies of knowledge) is a place where people can learn from each other. Things one usually does not learn, told by voices that are not always heard, from different parts of society and the world. In BOK we exchange knowledge that feeds a more just and humane society. BOK welcomes life experts rather than professional authorities.​

In May 2024, BOK presents a participatory path around transmission, co-learning and co-creation to a group of participants. We see the city as a place where infinite knowledge intersects, knowledge that often remains underexposed or censored. In the territory of Kortrijk, we seek out and support that knowledge and the people who possess it.

The first part of the track takes the form of a workshop: the BOK team shares its visions and tools around meeting and listening practices developed during previous editions, based on mutual support and learning together. For the second part, the group goes outside to experiment in public spaces. We meet passers-by, neighbours, people on the street or in local organisations to learn from them. Finally, these ‘bodies of knowledge’ are invited to come and speak in the BOK tent during the BOK Learning Days Kortrijk. Thus, we support them in telling their story and together create a temporary, local and free classroom. A radical depiction of what school could be.

It is a space to listen, to ask, to connect. In other cities, BOK presented learning sessions such as: Meertalig zingen als politiek/cultureel activisme (Şeref & Gamze), Hoe politiegeweld in onze buurten bestrijden? (Collectif des Madres), Hoe je jezelf geneest met helende planten (Valérie​​), De slam, de stem, en het pad van de jeugd die niet in hokjes past (Drissia​​). The programme for Kortrijk will be announced later.

As a semi-nomadic classroom space, BOK is always present in the same place in the city for a few weeks or months. In May 2024, you will find the colourful BOK tent in Kortrijk’s Van Raemdonckpark. Be welcome to listen in and learn from each other.

This project is part of the European programme apap, a project co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union.