During Night University, not only students and professors will be walking on the campus of Tilburg University this Tuesday evening and night. Children and other Tilburg residents in particular seize the opportunity to attend special lectures and workshops. Those by children’s book writer Paul van Loon and Maarten van Riel, author of The Sadness of Tilburg, are especially popular and are packed.
In the ‘Clay Yourself’ workshop, children aged about ten learn in an accessible way how social media makes them look at themselves differently. Girls wish they were prettier, boys want muscles. While they are making two figures – one must resemble themselves and the other must represent what they would like to look like – they hear about a study into this by three university employees.
Daphne (9) thinks the workshop is “fantastic”, she says with a radiant smile. And she has also learned something: “Some are happy with their bodies and some are not.” Which group does she belong to? “I would really like longer hair. But without tangles.”
One hundred lectures and workshops
The university has been organizing Night University since 2011 with the main goals of making science accessible and giving something back to the city. There are more than a hundred lectures, workshops, experiments and performances in total. Such as special twilight safaris through the nature around the campus and a lecture about the importance of demonstrating.
The pro-Palestinian action group Palestine Solidarity Tilburg (PST) skipped that lecture. About thirty people demonstrate outside against the ties that the university has with Israeli universities and after a while the group moves in and occupies the Cube building with a peaceful sit in.
The sadness of Tilburg
A lecture by city professor Ton Wilthagen and Maarten van Riel about his book The Sadness of Tilburg turns out to be a major crowd puller. Another building further on, the room is packed and visitors marvel at old photos of a beautiful Tilburg center with monumental buildings, wide avenues and now demolished monuments. “Eternally a shame,” people mutter to each other.
“But we shouldn’t just look back,” Wilthagen tells the audience. According to him, the city is seizing new opportunities. The LocHal has been chosen as one of the most beautiful buildings in the world. In the Spoorzone, old buildings are being restored and converted into something new, such as Mindlabs, the neighbor of the LocHal. “That building could also have been demolished,” says the city professor.
In total, around 5,000 visitors registered for Night University, more than the organization had expected in advance. The atmosphere is pleasant, even the demonstration is fairly orderly. Other rooms will be designated for the lectures and workshops that would take place in the occupied building. Announcements on screens alert visitors to the new locations and people walk there in a long stream, chatting quietly.
Make a connection
“One of the best things is that more and more Tilburg institutions are participating in Night University,” says Maud de Bock of the organization. “This year, the Nature Museum and the Textile Museum will also have a stall here. And pop venue 013 participated in advance, they had a program prior to a concert. It is nice to make a connection in this way.”
Former student Moniek IJzermans is one of the regular visitors to Night University. “It’s so great that people from the city can organize something here themselves. You get a stage and can make use of the brainpower here. That’s really an added value of a university in your city. It doesn’t just belong to the students, but to all of us.”
