Close Up 9.2: Unwrap Your Birthday Ritual

To celebrate VOX-POP's 11th birthday, we want to invite you to an evening filled with rituals and storytelling. We’ll reflect on what birthday rituals mean to us and what they reveal about ourselves. What birthday memories and stories do you have? Let's talk about the rituals that mark our lives every year!

Birthdays are a way we celebrate life and look back on the past. How we experience birthdays differs strongly from person to person: maybe you eat a cake, blow out candles, sing, meet with friends, go out, see family. Or maybe you don’t celebrate it at all.

The things we do (or don't) on our birthdays, whether repeated each year or newly created, often become rituals. These birthday rituals carry meaning and help define how we celebrate ourselves and one another. By keeping this line of thought in mind, we will dive deeper into the question of how shared birthday memories influence how our rituals are revisited.

We'll start the evening in a Kringverjaardag, followed by Irene Stengs' mini lecture in which she maps the connections between ritual practices. A poetry writing and reading workshop will be gifted to us by spoken word artist and writer Sandy Bosmans—through poetry & reflection we explore birthdays as meaningful rituals.

Come to our birthday party, bring your best birthday memories, and let us surprise you!

Practical information

This programme will take place at VOX-POP, ground floor (Binnengasthuisstraat 9). Make sure to be on time so you don't miss any cake (shhh)!

Our event is free of charge, but we kindly ask you to sign up due to limited capacity.