As you may have already noticed while browsing the website, you see many landscapes and pictures of trees, meadows, sky, rivers and the sea. We keep the colors in blue, green and yellow. This stands for water, sky, green meadows and forests, the sun and warm light. Thus, the colors express life, freedom, vastness, movement, lightness, calmness, depth, ease and security. These are aspects that we associate with the igdra space. The igdra space wants to be a space that we design together and in which we can let our creativity flow, discover new worlds and unfold. This is how we enrich each other.
Mythological origin of the name
We like stories. And myths are very special kinds of stories. The igdra space was founded in Europe and most of the images on the website are also from there. Especially from the United Kingdom (UK), southern Germany and the Mediterranean. These are the places where I, Nora, have stayed most often in recent decades and where Celts and Germanic tribes lived, who gave the world tree (or tree of life) the name Yggdrasil. It connects the worlds with each other and reflects the constantly changing cosmos.
The connection between Ghana, India and Germany
Only since the end of 2019 have I had the opportunity to leave Europe again and resume my goal of traveling and discovering the world to the extent I had hoped for (except for the small thing called a pandemic coming in teh way, I managed to do so quite well 😉). So life took me to India and Ghana, among other places. I already had a connection to India through my work and friends. The desire to go to Ghana arose rather from the fact that the new public health projects that I was supposed to lead in East Africa did not receive any funding due to the corona pandemic. So, I finally chose a corner of the world that was still completely unknown to me and that I was able to encounter all by myself. And, there were supposed be cultures in which women had a completely different position in the family and society compared to those I had previously known from Europe, Asia and other regions. "Fascinating!" I thought to myself. And so it was. The people and the country immediately inspired me and offered me a home.
As former British colonies, India and Ghana also share a common (rather sad) history and language with the UK. My original field of ethnology/cultural anthropology also played an ambivalent and unfortunately often dubious role in colonial history. All the more a reason for us cultural anthropologists in the igdra space to contribute the strengths of the subject for a better everyday life in the coexistence of people today and in the future.
Many people from India and Ghana have been living in Germany for decades. And many Germans live in Ghana and India and got to know and to love the countries and its people. We want to continue to promote this and expand it with the component of conscious learning from each other. We in the igdra space team also come from different worlds, which we want to connect in a creative way. In our small team, we bring together different nationalities, cultures, genders, phenotypes, belief systems, professions and horizons of experience. This should result in fruitful new ideas and projects around the promotion of art, culture, education, emotional competence, relationships, society and communication in interaction with technology and nature. The community carries this endeavour further out into the world.
We are aware that we potentially have a huge target group, whose members find very different content and formats appealing and have very different needs.
In the igdra space, discussions and projects take place in an academic context, as well as professional and practical projects for people of all educational, social, cultural and professional backgrounds. Everyone is welcome in all of the formats.
Participation is important to us. And so we are now at the beginning and are working on finding in a participatory approach a language and formats together in the course of our development, with which we address the target groups in their diversity equally and specifically.
A journey lies ahead of us. You are cordially invited to accompany us and to explore new paths with us.
Best wishes to us all,
Your igdra space Team
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