Dornach, Switzerland. Andrea De La Cruz has been working as coordinator for studies and further education at the Goetheanum since 2022. Here, she talks about her experience.
What do you find most rewarding about your work as a coordinator?
Studium is a crossroads where people of all cultures, ages, professional backgrounds and interests can meet. Continuously learning about the world through each person’s experiences is the most rewarding aspect of my work.
What are essential elements when it comes to holding the space for other people’s learning experience?
An understanding of the students’ motives for joining the programs is essential—What guided them here? What do they expect and why? What do they envision beyond their time at the Goetheanum? Sustaining a living image of each student’s biography so that we can consciously accompany them during their time at the Goetheanum, is at the foundation of our work. Similarly, remaining interested in anthroposophy’s own biography, which is on the one hand historically grounded and also constantly becoming through the work of the School and the Sections, seems to me to be essential for developing study programs that are genuinely unique and alive.
What role does community play in the context of the studies?
Studying general anthroposophy means studying relationships—substance and form, spirit and matter, human and nature, self and other—whether we do it through texts, nature observation or artistic practice. In contemplating the relational foundation of the world, it becomes apparent that we can consciously participate in and shape these relationships. Rather than aiming at “constructing” community, we work towards opening spaces where the “potential” community can be perceived and notice that it is actualized at any moment that we want to step in. This is what a process of shared-learning through anthroposophy means to me.
More Goetheanum Studium
Translation Paula Boslau
Image Andrea De La Cruz (center). Photo: Nicole Asis
