What do you feel, hear and see when you stand in the middle of the forest?
“I feel the peace and hear singing birds,” a student from Ynsicht said softly, as sunlight filtered through the canopy of the Leeuwarder Forest. It was the first day of Genius Loci, a new arts education project in which students, artists and nature experts explore the connection between humans and nature.
Genius Loci—literally the spirit of a place—is a collaboration between Kunstkade, art initiative VHDG and Oerol. During the 2025/2026 school year, the project will serve as a testing ground where art, nature and inclusion go hand in hand. Students from the International Transition Class (ISK) and Ynsicht in Leeuwarden discover how art can help share stories, open perspectives and deepen understanding of the world around them.
A laboratory for imagination and renewal
Kunstkade initiates projects that allow students to discover the power of art—not only as a form of expression, but as a way of thinking, exploring and connecting. In this creative laboratory, schools, artists and children collaborate on new ways of learning, seeing and making. There is space for experimentation, ownership and imagination: essential building blocks in a rapidly changing society.
For Genius Loci, art initiative VHDG invited artist Faisel Saro. Together with Marrigt van der Valk, consultant on inclusion and equality, he takes students into the Leeuwarder Forest. Marrigt helps them experience how people from different cultures relate to nature, and how everyone has their own way of connecting with their surroundings. Faisel translates these experiences into an artistic process where listening, observing and creating come together.
“Nature belongs to everyone,” says Marrigt. “But the way we experience it differs. By reflecting on that together, we create space for understanding—and for new forms of connection.”
From Leeuwarden to Oerol
The project culminates in a spatial artwork born from the stories, ideas and experiences of the students themselves. In May 2026, the work will be presented in the Leeuwarder Forest. A month later, the students will travel to Terschelling, where they’ll once again immerse themselves in art, nature and imagination during the Oerol Festival. They will attend performances, meet artists, and experience what happens when art touches the landscape—and the landscape touches back.
Genius Loci shows how learning, creating and experiencing can become one. How art can be a space where everyone can take part—regardless of background, language or experience. And how a forest, an island, a festival and a classroom can flow into one another as places where curiosity and imagination are given room to grow.
