See http://www.aconferencecalledwonder.com/ for more about this annual gathering of Sunday Assembly people from around the world.

1. SUNDAY ASSEMBLY PRESENTS
MAY 19TH
–22ND
2016
A CONFERENCE CALLED
WONDER
KYTOPIA
Oudegracht 245, 3511. Utrecht.
SUNDAYASSEMBLY.COM @SUNDAYASSEMBLYTHESUNDAYASSEMBLY⌂ 
#ACCW16

2. A CONFERENCE CALLED WONDER
MAY 19TH
– 22ND
2016
UTRECHT, THE NETHERLANDS
Welcome to Sunday Assembly’s 3rd
annual international
conference! We are thrilled you could join us for this rockin
event – a veritable smorgasbord of inspirational speakers, deep
thinkers and great doers!
Over the weekend we will endeavor to provide you with tools to
improve your life, grow your own Sunday Assembly community
and change the world in the process. Does it get better than that?
Oh wait, it does. Besides all the fantastic speakers and
workshops, we’ll be bursting into song (a lot) and you can even
join in our ‘Bonte Avond’’ cabaret on Saturday night! Don’t
forget to take some time to walk the streets of our gorgeous
location too, Utrecht is full of history and it’s ready for you to
soak it up.
The whole weekend culminates with a Sunday Assembly Of All
The Talents. The theme: Celebrating Life Together.
This is A Conference Called Wonder and a conference of
wonder.
Dig in folks, dig in.
SANDERSON & PIPPA

3. SANDERSON JONES
Sanderson is Co-founder and CEO of Sunday Assembly, and host of the
London Sunday Assembly. A former / occasional stand-up comedian, he
is on a mission to inspire people to live better, help often, and wonder
more using the Sunday Assembly as his vehicle, and non-religious
spirituality as his weapon!
PIPPA EVANS
Pippa is Co-founder of Sunday Assembly and music coordinator/leader
at Sunday Assembly London. A prolific comedy writer and performer,
Pippa recently won an Olivier Award with her pals at Showstoppers: An
Improvised Musical (that’s the top award you can get!)
CELEBRATE LIFE.
BUILD COMMUNITY.
HAVE FUN.
EWOUT JANSEN
Ewout toured the Dutch comedy circuit for five years and won 12
comedy awards. Depressingly talented he retired from telling jokes for
money to think with the Dutch National ThinkTank, lecture at the School
for Communication and Journalism in Utrecht and counsel the Dutch
Supreme Court. He also chairs the Cultuurbord art foundation and
frequently hosts the Sunday Assembly in Utrecht.
Thank you to Sunday Assembly Utrecht and the small army of volunteers for all the lost
Sundays and late nights which they gave to making this wonderful event happen.
With extra special thanks to:
Aafje Hunink
Elizabeth Schuringa
Ewout Jansen
Jasmijn Peskens
Lisa Verhaeghe de Naeyer
MICHELLE DE WIT
Michelle is a cultural entrepreneur, actor in training and coach. Teaching
social work students, acts in the strangest scenarios from security at
Schiphol AirPort to organising theatre in Berlin, nothing is too crazy!
Michelle frequently hosts Sunday Assembly Utrecht and is a key
member of their organising team.
Michelle De Wit
Mirjam Jansen-Brok
Ralph Delsasso
Lisa van Schijndel
Evelien Stougie
Marcel van de Peut
Sabrina Leidelmeijer
David van den Bogaard

4. THURSDAY 19TH
/ FRIDAY 20TH
MAY
THURSDAY, MAY 19TH
7:30pm Meet and Greet at Winkel Van Sinkel
158, 3511 AZ Utrecht
FRIDAY, MAY 20TH
9:15am Registration and Coffee
9:45am Welcome from Sanderson and the Utrecht team!
10:00am ‘State of the Nation’ with Sanderson Jones
10:30am Shamash Alidina: Mindfulness for Dummies!
Shamash Alidina is one of the world’s leading proponents of Mindfulness –
he even wrote ‘Mindfulness for Dummies’! This globe trotting teacher will
share the story of mindfulness and demonstrate tips and techniques that can
help you and your community lead more mindful lives.
11:00am Workshop trailers
11:15am Coffee/tea break (provided)
11:45am Workshops in Breakout Rooms (60 mins)
a) Intuition: Stop, Listen, GO! – Lisa van Schijndel
Intuition: What is it exactly? How do you follow it, and is this always a good
idea? We will go on a journey in which we’ll take a closer look at our own
inner voice, where it is seated and how we can hear it. Working with ideas
like Theory U, we will investigate ways of listening and experience by doing.
Lisa van Schijndel is a creative, positive life-treasurer that is always on the
look for personal development adventures. Lisa is a clinical psychologist,
songwriter and singer, a core member at De Universiteit and recently joined
the Utrecht Sunday Assembly Team.
b) How Socrates can make you happier than Kanye West – Michael Plant
Most of us (including Kanye West) misunderstand how to pursue happiness
and could be much happier than we are. Michael Plant will explain what
happiness is, why the evidence shows we’re much worse at it than we
thought, why you should try to change how you think and how you spend your
time, not your objective circumstances, what practical evidence-based steps
you can take to find more happiness, and why Socrates was right all along
(even though he didn’t know it).

5. FRIDAY 20TH
MAY
Michael Plant is studying a PhD on the nature and causes of happiness in
the University of Oxford’s Philosophy Department.
c) How to become a Way Finder - Marien Baerveldt and David Bronstein
What are you doing to support your inner student? Your inner artist? What
are you doing to support your community builders? Your teachers? Your
listeners? During this workshop Marien Baerveldt will share what it means to
start caring deeply for our own learning, and that of others. It will be based
on experiences with Open Masters and The Wayfinders Kit.
Marien Baerveldt is a social entrepreneur who builds learning organisations
and communities through hosting conversations that matter. Having studied
cognitive neuropsychology and organisational sciences he continued on a
road less traveled and co-created the self guided learning community ‘De
Universiteit’.
d) Sunday Assembly Socialising: The important business of having FUN,
in between Assemblies – Jeff Sargeant and Ian Joliet, Sunday
Assembly LA and London
How do you build a community? Jeff and Ian will be exploring all the lessons
learned from leading Social at Sunday Assembly - which smoups and
activities really get the community buzzing.
Jeff Sargeant is the Community Coordinator for Sunday Assembly Los
Angeles, the bearer of the first Sunday Assembly tattoo, and has attended
Assemblies in 10 different cities. He is a librarian by trade. Ian Joliet is
the Head Of Social Events for Sunday Assembly London. He’s hosted
Assemblies, sung at Wilderness Festival and visited several others. Ian is
obsessed with music and all things social.
12:45pm Lunch by the canal
(Sunday Assembly Chapters and friends, set up your displays)
1:45pm Show Us What You’ve Got! Network, meet like-minds, ask important
questions.
2.30pm Plenary Talks (20mins x 3)
a) Mental Fitness – Kasper Van Meulen
Kasper van der Meulen is an author and storyteller who takes a no-nonsense
approach to personal development. His workshops and lectures are jam-
packed with interactive experiences, easy to use techniques and appealing
stories that help you find the best version of yourself. Author of ‘Mental

6. Fitness For The Modern Brain’, the book teaches us how to focus in a world
trying to distract us. Kasper studied with the “Ice Man” and can survive
insanely cold temperatures.
b) Overachieving – Jeroen Van Baar
Jeroen van Baar studied Psychology and Neuroscience in Utrecht and
Paris. He is a researcher at the Donders institute for Brain, Cognition and
Behaviour in Nijmegen, was selected for the Dutch National ThinkTank and
therefore is one of the most overachieving thinkers of his generation.
Jeroen however claims we should strive for mediocrity instead of excellence.
His popular book (“De Prestatiegeneratie”) looks at where our drive to excel
comes from and where it can take us if we are not careful. Jeroen has
intriguing ideas on his generation’s need to excel that are incredibly smart,
reasonably funny and quite inspirational.
c) Voice Meditation – Yinske Silva
Yinske will be leading us together in a voice meditation. Her ‘metSTEM’
(withVOICE) projects range from dance albums, jazz and improvisation
sessions to popfestivals, singing and meditation workshops. We’ll learn
how to meditate using jazz improvisation, scatting, free vocal improvisation,
dance and movement improvisation. Wowzers.
Yinske is a trained coach with a background as a linguistic anthropologist.
She coaches performers but also project managers, administrators and
organizers in arts and culture and specialises in community art projects.
3:30pm Coffee/Tea Break
4:00pm Workshops in breakout rooms – pick one of...
a) Bubbles – Using our personal space as a tool for peaceful communication –
Jethro Rahajaan
The term ‘bubble’ refers to our personal space. Consciously or
subconsciously we all use our bubble in a way that influences the way we
communicate with each other. We’ll test some techniques to create more
awareness of our own and each others’ bubble and how to make it super
strong. Jethro is a dancer. He has taught hundreds of children how to
toprock, freeze and backspin; better known as breakdancing - using dance to
explore ‘proxemics’, or the science of personal space.
FRIDAY 20TH
MAY

7. b) Impro – Freek Zwanenberg
Freek Zwanenberg is a classically schooled (popular) piano player.
After studying at the University of Humanistic Studies in Utrecht
Freek developed a beautiful personal theory and approach to
improvisation as a way of life. Freek subsequently makes his living
improvising and teaching his fellow man about improvisation before
it is too late. Also, his name is Freek.
c) Secular Rituals: Death – Tim Lawler
Tim Lawler is an alive man, but won’t be that way for long. Death will
take him, as it will take you but before then Tim will be running a
workshop on soul midwifery – the art of helping people deal with their
own end. We’ll also be thinking about how we can create new rituals
around death in a secular world. Ad man, actor, Assembler and other
things that begin with A.
d) The Life Course - Ruth Moir and Sanderson Jones
Over the past few months, Sunday Assembly has been piloting a brand
new way helping people through the big (and small) questions through
the Life Course. It’s based in on the evidence based work of Martin
Seligman (using his PERMA model) combined with what we’ve learnt over
three years of Sunday Assembly, join Ruth Moir (Sunday Assembly
London’s Community Creator) and Sanderson Jones – (Sunday Assembly
co-founder) – who will share the findings from our first prototype.
5:00pm Philosophical Speed Dating hosted by Lisa van Schijndel and Janneke
Meijers
5:30pm Closing song
We will close the day with an optional guided night-time ‘Lumen Walk’
around Utrecht – learn about the history of this beautiful city, walking in
the footsteps of monks under the famous Dom Tower.
Sunday Assembly Utrecht’s House Band The Ameezingband will provide
evening entertainment in Kytopia.
FRIDAY 20TH
MAY

8. SATURDAY, MAY 21ST
9:00am Coffee/tea available
9:30am Welcome back! Let’s get singing...
10:00am Plenary Talks (3 x 20 mins)
a) Sing For Your Life – Emma Broomfield
By day Emma Broomfield works for The Choir with No Name - a UK charity
which runs choirs and singing workshops for people that have experienced
homelessness. By night, she runs the incredibly successful and fun Sunday
Assembly London Choir. She regularly speaks on the subject of singing and
wellbeing and has given talks at venues such as the Southbank Centre,
the Royal College of Arts, Boston University (London campus) and Memorial
University, Newfoundland to name but a few.
b) Innovations in Healthcare – Jos De Blok
Jos de Blok is the founder and CEO of Dutch organisation Buurtzorg,
where he pioneers new ways of delivering home-based healthcare. Within
Buurtzorg, autonomous teams of nurses work directly with their patients, in
a community-based network free from management structure. This
innovative model frees nurses from administrative burdens, allowing them
to focus on the business of providing quality care. Buurtzorg works in ways
that not only meet the needs of patients in their homes, but the needs of
employees too — the company has three times been declared the
Netherlands’ ‘employer of the year’.
c) Flexible Thinking – Astrid Williams
Astrid Willems is a philosopher who studied communication, philosophy,
and fine arts. An entrepreneur and illustrator she gives workshops based
on her flexible thinking (‘flexdenken’) philosophy all around the
Netherlands. Astrid’s influential book full of beautiful illustration and
impressive theory about flexibility that has Dutch reviewers (famous for
their lack of enthusiasm about everything) waxing lyrical. We are honoured
she was happy to come back to a bigger and better international assembly.
11:00 Coffee/Tea Break
11:30 Workshops in Breakout Rooms: (75 mins)
SATURDAY 21ST
MAY

9. a) Be a mindfulness host – Shamash Alidina
We all need to allow space for our brain in our lives. In this Mindfulness
101, Shamash will share his top tips and tricks on how to host mindfulness
sessions for you and your community.
b) Using the Sunday Assembly Brand – Jacqueline Gunn
Want to know your Trade Gothic from your Chronicle? Or how best to ‘lift
pitch’ Sunday Assembly? Jacqueline and Sanderson will take you through
all the things you need to know about the Sunday Assembly brand including
how to answer tricky questions like ‘What does it mean to be radically
inclusive then?’ and ‘Are you an atheist church?’.
c) Community and Healthcare – Liz Slade
Why do doctors keep people alive? Why is it better that to be healthy than
ill? After 10 years in the health industry Liz worked to explore these
questions. Now she works at Sunday Assembly as our COO and she’ll share
her findings with us. Clue: being happy and kind is a pretty big part of it
d) How to Be an Improv Superstar – Kiki Hohnen
While she was studying psychology, Kiki discovered improv and has been
performing and teaching ever since. She’s also used it in her professional
career in a range of ways: improving autistic children’s social skills in a fun
way, teaching people with aphasia how to communicate non-verbally,
coaching singles to have more fun while getting dates, and teaching doctors
how to communicate. This session will use improv skills to help improve
your life!
e) Radical Inclusivity – Sam Brown
Everyone wants to be inclusive, but what does it mean? Well, Sunday
Assembly is ‘radically inclusive’ and Sam is going to blow your mind when
explaining this post-theistic trend in secular philosophy and its
incommensurability (Ed: his word) with classical identities.
Sam Brown launched Sunday Assembly Oxford and is Chair of the Society
for Philosophy in Practice.
12:30pm Lunch break together
1:30pm “Town Hall” meeting
Questions and conversation with Sanderson Jones (Sunday Assembly
CEO), Jacqueline Gunn (Sunday Assembly Chief Community Creator), Liz
Slade (Sunday Assembly COO) and David Rose (Sunday Assembly Board
Director).
SATURDAY 21ST
MAY

10. OR Creative Walk with Janneke Meijers
Janneke works by the principles of the Art of Hosting, which is an
internationally used practice of building meaningful conversations. In the
workshops we leave our work, our girlfriends, our social media at the door
and slow down to see what actually lives in our bodies, in our minds. And
then, we speed up. Janneke will be guiding a walk using these techniques.
After completing her cultural and social studies in Utrecht, Janneke
became a journalist, actress, coach and community facilitator for ‘De
Universiteit’. She recently joined the team of the Sunday Assembly Utrecht.
2:30pm The Sunday Assembly General Assembly
Every year the Sunday Assembly hosts the General Assembly where
Accredited members of Sunday Assembly Everywhere (our global movement
of chapters) vote on proposals submitted by the network.
OR Finding deeper connection with Zlatina Tsvetkova
Let’s explore the essence of personal, real and human connection together.
In a life where connection means wifi access and relationship means a
match on Tinder, we have forgotten what it feels like to truly connect with
someone, to create intimacy and share a moment with someone. In this
workshop we will venture into figuring out what makes us truly “click” with
someone on physical, emotional and/or intellectual level.
Zlatina Tsvetkova calls herself a social pirate, organisational choreographer
and forest witch. She ventures into every opportunity to find treasures, uses
her experience as dancer and host to create spaces where people perform,
connect and ‘dance’ with their environment and believes there is magic in
nature.
3:45pm Open Space – What are the big questions on your mind?
How do you best appreciate and celebrate life? What’s the best way of
creating opportunities to engage community? How can we recreate that
special feeling when you’re standing at the beach and looking out to sea
and everything feels magical? Or perhaps you just want to create a scratch
choir singing ‘The Fresh Prince of Bel Air’ together. Yep, these kinds of
things. Anything you want to discuss, now’s the time!
5:45pm Closing song
For the evening, Sunday Assembly Utrecht invite your to participate in a
‘Bonte Avond’. This directly translates as ‘silly evening’ and we’re going to
take that as the ‘Sunday Assembly Cabaret’!
Bring your best performances and skits to the warmth of the SA crowd!
SATURDAY 21ST
MAY

11. SUNDAY, MAY 22ND
Sunday Assembly of All The Talents
10:30am Morning Coffee
11:00am Sunday Assembly at Kytopia
Join our mega Sunday Assembly with people from all over the world.
Co-hosted by Sanderson and the wonderful Sunday Assembly Utrecht.
Our main speakers will be Esther Van Duin and Brankele Frank; Sunday
Assembly Utrecht’s top speakers from their programme over the past year.
Esther investigates the association between traumatic life events,
genetic vulnerability and psychotic reactivity to stress as a neuroscientist at
the Maastricht University and was selected for the Dutch National
ThinkTank. Brankele is a neuroscientist and a McKinsey consultant.
12:30pm Stroopwafels and Tea!
Join us at Het Gegeven Paard for goodbye drinks before we all head back to
our own corners of the world.
SUNDAY MAY 22ND

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LIVE BETTER.
HELP OFTEN.
WONDER MORE.
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