Young People Take Responsibility – Waldorf Students Participate in Future Workshop
When the youth symposium in Kassel takes place for the 19th time in December 2018, 200 engaged and interested young people will gather to meet with experts from research, politics, and the economy. Since the first Future Workshop in 2009, the goal of the symposium has been to jointly reflect on the urgent questions of our time and to create a platform for students who want to take responsibility for society’s future. Students must qualify to participate in the symposium; during the selection process, Waldorf teachers throughout the country nominate particularly gifted and engaged candidates. In advance of the symposium, participating students must prepare an essay on one of the symposium’s questions, which are then further explored in workshops. Symposium themes may include empathy, freedom, or – as in the upcoming symposium – “light.” But regardless of the theme, “all thought provocations that are developed in the course of the Future Workshop, the participants bring back to their home environments. The participants thus act as multipliers of their generation within society,” said Andreas Rebmann, the responsible project manager at SAGST.