NGV Radio John Gillespie & Thomas Ameel

Last episode of this season going into a well deserved summer break. 

With Zeek Ekiz, from Georgia, and Kamila Bialy, from Poland, we're reflecting on this new transition from lockdown into 'normality', on opportunities the pandemic unexpectedly offered, on online platforms created to reach out in to the world...

and as a treat, we share our most naughty experiences we can think of. Quite something.

Enjoy !

Thomas & John

This 8th episode of the 2nd Season we feel we f****d it up, as it is really becoming too professional and smooth, we think. Or was it just a wonderful conversation with Rick Dove, flowing in such a way that it felt too good for our amateur radio skills? 

Rick is a black, London based poet, who talks beautifully and inspiring about bringing his experience to an audience, managing to impact people with his words about race, or about capitalism, or about what he thinks that could agitate a crowd that needs some agitation :). 

As an event organiser, Rick means to connect people and he found that poetry is another powerful tool to forge connection and impact the minds and hearts of people. 

You'll hear Rick perform a few of his poems live, and if you want more, you can go to his YouTube channel or his popular Twitter feed. And if you want more, there is more, because he just published his book, Tales from the Other Box, in August 2020. 

Enjoy !

Thomas and John

In  this week's broadcast, we meet with Lena  Grigoreva and Elena Lasaja, two prominent gestalt therapists from Belarus, where chaos and divide have dominated communal life since August 9th 2020 and has polarized not only the political debate, but also everyday life, families, friendships, and personal experiences.

We will be exploring with them how they deal with that polarisation on different levels, how to support and lack support, and what they have learned from these recent experiences?
What can we bring from gestalt theory and practice to aid our understanding and provide support to those affected? How is the situation in Belarus relevant - and related - to  events happening throughout the world? 

We also bring in another experience of polarization to this chat, by listening to a poem from Ron Jesiolowski, an American painter who wrote and painted about the US polarization revolving the 2020 elections.

Similar or different? That's what we're curious about.

Enjoy,

Thomas and John

Tonight we have a special show, dedicated to the first in two NGV retreats that will be organised after the summer break, early and mid fall 2021.

This first retreat will take place in the frist week of September, on the beautiful, mountainous island of Crete and wil envolve Gestalt (no shit) and climbing !

But don't be alarmed.. it's not all about getting to the top.

We'll be chatting with Kaliopi Koutousi, our Greec colleague, local contact and thriving force behind the idea of this retreat. She’ll talk about why Gestalt and climbing are so close and how the experience of the mountain and nature invite us to be embodied beings.

John is trying to be present with us after a hell of a week, and Thomas is drinking a fluorescent green Greec liquour made from pistachio nuts that has been sitting among his liquor collection since 2015..

how blessed we are that this is only audio..

Get yourself some quality olives, buy that strange unreadable Greec drink in your local liquor store and listen to all Crete has to offer. Imagining to be in a Greec island has never been easier.

Enjoy!

PS: if you became curious about this intriguing retreat, go to the NGV website to get more info

John, Kaliopi and Thomas

In our 5th episode of Season 2, we're speaking with Ash Kotak, a gay man of Indian descent, who succesfully campaigned for the creation of a very first national Aids Memorial in London. 

The Aids epidemic and how the world dealt with it or didn't deal with it, could learn us a lot in trying to understand how we should tackle this current global pandemic of Covid. And Ash points out so clearly how Aids, since it's emergence in the beginning of the 80's, has had his own global scale, of which many are far more unaware than we are with Covid.

It's proven to be an intense conversation, with Ash taking us on a journey through his own history and the different identities and trauma's he encountered. The meaning he has found on this path, touched and moved us and explains a lot of the commitment and energy Ash puts in this campaign.

If you want to see Ash talking of Sky Tv, go to this link.

And if you feel touched by his story and mission, and understand how important it is to remember what Aids has done, you can support Ash's campaign here.

In this 4th episode of Season 2, Kamila Bialy is again our guest host, having a conversation with young gestalt colleagues from both hemispheres, bridging morning, noon and evening in one show.  

"In this second episode I would like to continue exploring with my Humans of Gestalt guests who we are as the younger generation of the world wide gestalt community, what our shared experience is, what our needs are, how we can support each other.
In the first episode, with my guests we identified some shared experiences, like a sense of being lost in the world of too many (often apparent) possibilities and amid this - what looks like a chaos - an urge to act in any meaningful way upon the world we live in."

Together with Thomas, Kamila leans on some footage of the first episode of her series, to speak with her guests, Aliya Amarshi (Canada) and Rhys Price-Robertson (Australia), being both gestalt therapists and social scientists of the younger generation, about how the knowledge of this felt generalised sense of confusion as well as strong impulse to act can inform our theory and practice.

Enjoy!

Thomas and Kamila