Grown Up Business Trip 🛝🌳

How are you? How are you feeling? Are you busy growing? Trying to grow up? It’s ok to stop... How do you feel about the future? It’s ok to feel down… Does the future scare you? Do you prefer to think about the past? Or are you chilling right here right now in the present moment? It’s all good, fall is good for reflection in every direction. Up, down, inward, outward, sideways. Look at your leaves before you let them go. Come spring we’ll continue to grow.

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This is a newsletter about how we accidentally became children in our attempt to grow up. It’s Emma speaking, writing to you from a café in Barcelona. I was supposed to write this a week ago, but editing it while being away from the studio actually feels pretty good. It’s always a little easier to reflect on things once you have some distance from them, don’t you think?

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Last summer I took a trip with my dad, with a similar goal: to reflect on life, together, from a distance. We discussed various topics: work, money, art, love, the past, the future. I love my dad, we share a sense of humor and playful creativity, even though he has worked in offices most of his life as an executive consultant. He values hard work, family, comfort and stability, and although he is a chill and supportive dad, I sometimes worry that he might sometimes worry about my future, and what will become of me. I have no steady income, no partner, I do not own a house and I have not birthed any grandchildren yet either…when he was my age, he had all of those things. When will I grow up?

When we talked about XP, dad the consultant asked me things like ‘where do you see that going, exactly?’, ‘have you guys figured out a way to make money yet?’, ‘what is your vision for Extra Practice?’ and suggested getting more serious and structured (his expertise is in leadership). I see his point, structures and systems can definitely bring clarity and make things grow and move faster.

But what is the point in growing or moving faster if you’re not sure what direction you want to grow or move in?

That’s why last week, with this question in mind, I prompted every XP member to prepare a 15 minute mini-workshop, in preparation for the Grown Up Business Trip were about to take. Our ‘XP Away-Day’ would be a perfect moment to think about the future together, from a distance: what we want from it, what direction we want to grow in, and how. And so we all met in Culemborg on October 31st and cycled through the dark to the attic we rented in a farmhouse next to the Lek (Leak) river.

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After settling in and staring at AI generated autumnal ambient jazz videos that were auto-playing on the TV for way too long, we started with the first mini workshop, led by Elliott. Here are the instructions, so you can try it out yourself, maybe with some friends or colleagues:

So we all sat there pondering, waiting for memories to come up - both individual and collective experiences, trying to write them down. I struggled at first, feeling like entering a gigantic library and having to pick 5 books from miles and miles of shelves, from ANY possible genre. But we all picked some, and after extracting the nice things from them and sharing those, we ended up with a very nice list of words that, even though they were harvested from the past, can tell us something about what we want from the future. Some of the words: Curiosity, Adventure, Rest, Initiation, Trips, Connection, Surprise, Learning, Play, Spontaneity, Love, Simplicity, Risk, Other-worldliness, Nature.

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Next morning we realized this trip was too short if we were going to go through 5 more workshops that day, so we decided to spontaneously book another night in a tiny forest house 1,5 hours away. We stopped for lunch in a restaurant on the way and drew on our placemats like children, swapping every few minutes to complete each other’s drawings. We were not growing up but our imaginations were definitely growing in many directions.

Elliott scanned all the placemats. He said we might be on to something here. Are these subconscious maps to our future?

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Initially, Brother Ben’s plan was to use the Lek for the baptism part, but by this time we had taken a train to Putten, where our forest house was located. Luckily, there was a subtropical pool just one dark forest walk away, so the workshop took place in its canteen, with a backdrop of screaming kids and the nostalgic smell of chlorine. We sketched different holy trinities and presented them to the rest of the brotherhood, finding interesting overlaps in our alternative Gods.

The symbols/gods to potentially worship: a seed; a big desk; an energy; a puddle; the river; the sun; a swan; a boat; a floaty; water; wind; soil. Stay tuned for the final religion, maybe we will convert you too one day.

We got baptized right after, in various water slides. I remember entering the first rapid and feeling a perfect cocktail of excitement, joy and surrender.

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That night we barely had energy left for one more workshop, but we powered through, this was our business future we were talking about! Jack’s workshop was an adaptation of the invention game. Here is a description, I highly recommend trying this one – especially if you have a clothing item at hand to cut some holes in.

The notes we wrote down to pick roles from might be interesting to look at, as they represent people we would value input from when it comes to the future of XP: the guy that always cleans our window; a chef; an electrician; a financial advisor; a regenerative farmer; an activist. The elements we wrote down to inspire inventions on: money; HDMI adapter; table leg; the fold-out bar in the storage closet; spreadsheet; the window.

This regenerative farmer presented a cutting-board-to-compost system in which the compost would fertilize a garden growing mint that would be used in our home made kombucha…

While this passionate table activist inspired us to call neighbouring studios to join forces and put all tables in the street (with our shoes on the table legs) for a table-march in solidarity with the invisible low paid desk-work that goes on behind our studio doors in order to make our playful creative lives possible….

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Our business trip was concluded with an autumn walk and some tree sitting. We chilled very hard in the present moment. The other 3 workshops have been postponed to the future. Until then there is no pressure to grow up just yet. Sorry, dad 🛝

Ben spoke at the Alternative Economies event at the Collaboration Station hosted by Platform BK and Hackers & Designers where he talked about Extra Practice as a model for collective working and learning

Gijs has been doing many school things early in the academic year. Writing critiques as teases with Critical Inquiry Lab first years, making self-portraits of inner dragons with the second years, starting up the second cohort of the Pre-Master, and thinking along about the future of the MA at Design Academy Eindhoven. Some of this surely made its way into text when Gijs was invited to contribute something on design schools to a zine for the Raise Your Voice programme of Baltan Laboratories.

Emma co-hosted sister Renée’s regenerative dinner at XP last month, planting the seed of having her own farm one day. Rumour has it they already have their eyes on a farm in Brabant and are writing their first business plan soon….

Ben will speak at Minimal Circuit today (Tuesday 12th of November) at Nieuwe Instituut, an event that explores Permacomputing and video games.

Elliott is currently working on 📒 The Internet Phone Book with 🌻 Kristoffer Tjalve. They hope to have it ready for print by the end of the month 🤞. Also, Elliott has revived an older project called the 🖥️ Computer Portraits, where he takes portraits of people 🫂 with their computers. If you'd like to 📸 capture a moment with your computer 🛜 forever, please get in ☎️ touch. If you are in Berlin, Elliott can take your computer portrait until 🗓️ November 24th, after which he will be available again in Holland.

Emma is in Barcelona visiting Camila cooking up a project about plants, intuition and regenerative living.

🗓️ Jack’s latest installation, designed for the @nieuweinstituut will be on display in the Garden Futures exhibition, opening on November 15th. There will be talks about the project from 15:00 and a visit to the installation/exhibition from 16:15 → RSVP here. The Garden Futures exhibition opening drinks will be from 19:00 → RSVP here

🗓️ The second session of Homemade Computer Club will be held at Varia on the 15th of November (15:00-18:00). Ben will talk about time with Kim Kleinert and the club will make some things together, more info here

📡 From 25th November Jack will be going to teach and give a talk at Falmouth University. He will be in London for the first half of December for studio visits and interviews about work-life for goodtimesbadtimes.club if you know someone he should speak with send an email to jack@jackbardwell.com

🗓️ Ben will host a research night at Nieuwe Instituut on the 28th of November to talk about self-reflectivity and computers. Elliott made a beautiful illustration for the event. The event will include contributions from the USB Club and Claire L. Evans. Sign up here

It’s sonic bath daaay! On Saturday the 23rd of November, you are warmly invited to join a workshop about sonic awareness, where Margo is going to guide you somewhere in between free musical improvisation and deep listening. We will sing, and breathe, and move, and make funny noises with funny objects. But most of all, we’re going to tune in to our environment and listen. So put on your most comfy clothes and come make bubbles with friends!
It begins at 13.00 and lunch is included (vegan and gluten free).
5 euros of participation is asked, with 10 spots available.
Send a message at marguerite.maire@outlook.fr to reserve yours :)