«Full, vibrant life»
Family life has become very diverse. But circumstances and what children bring with them can challenge the whole family. The Goetheanum therefore asks “How can family be learned?” and supports the diverse forms of family – with a festival for all family members.
Families have become very diverse: we have patchwork families, LGBTQ+ families, multigenerational families, single parents and ‘borrowed’ grand-parents as well as all kinds of living and residential communities. What they have in common is that they constitute the space where we care and are there for one another, where we grow with and through each other.
As head of the Social Science Section at the Goetheanum, Gerald Häfner is the initiator of the Family Festival. He finds it important that one does not let oneself be guided by rigid ideas but by the actual reality and that one works on shaping that reality in the best possible way. “Family is a gift”, he says, “and at the same time it is destiny and a task. It is not ready-made and given but our own creation that needs to be constantly renewed.” Families continually evolve together and this requires the right balance of freedom and loyalty. “We want to be free. But we need each other – as much as we need light. And our children want and need reliability, community, love,” Gerald Häfner adds and asks, “How do we learn to be a family, to be parents?”
A team of Goetheanum co-workers and others are organizing a festival to celebrate family life, which has faced great challenges due to the measures around the pandemic. “The Goetheanum and its wonderful park are open to families with children; to the full, vibrant, sad and beautiful life, to earnestness and fun, dance and games – and for sharing our lives and our paths, individually, together and with children,” Gerald Häfner announces. How is this done? “Children play while the adults talk – and vice versa.”
English by Margot M. Saar
Family Festival How do we want to live? The future of family, 4 to 7 August 2022, Goetheanum
Web (in German) Family Festival
Web (in French) Family Festival
Image Motif of the flyer for the Family Festival (Drawing: Sina Lux)