During the last weekend (14 to 16 April) biennial Geneva origami convention 2023 took place in Ferme Golay (Geneva). It was already 12th convention organized by Geneva origami group (Evelyne, Ghislaine, Bea, Marlyse), first in Bern, later in Geneva. It was also the first time I helped with organization.
The place itself is quite charming, but it wouldn’t be anything without all the wonderful people who participated and created a very pleasant atmosphere. Maybe I wasn’t looking well enough, but what I saw were shiny happy people everywhere, here and there concentrating hard to make a difficult step during workshops.
We had around 60 participants – many Swiss origamists, some of them coming to their very first in-person convention; several origami friends coming from France and two guests from UK. There were around 26 workshops led by our 3 invited guests (David Gachepapier – Belgium/Germany, Simon Cartier – Switzerland, and Amandine Guerra – France) and other participants (Christiane Bettens aka Mélisande*, Viviane Berty, Hubert Villeneuve, Alizée Glasser, Michel Grand, Edwin Corrie, Robert Foord, Evelyne Christen, Mou Ieng Wong, Charlotte Pfeiffer, and me).
We were lucky enough to have a big space with high ceiling where we can all fit in. With the three workshops happening at the same time, if the acoustics of the place wasn’t as good, it could have been much more challenging. The noise just couldn’t travel too far. Who never experienced Geneva convention, it’s quite interesting to see also how the place transforms into a dinning room when the food is about to be served and how it retransforms back to busy folding space once all is cleared away.
We have super nice people helping the whole time with the food and dishes (Patrick, Bruno, and Ghislaine especially), Bea and Marlyse taking care of the Boutique Japonaise, and Evelyne who managed everything around the registration, arranged the place and food for us. Especially this year getting the place and food was extra complicated.
Some other highlights:
- amazingly engineered model Poule pondeuse by Viviane Berty (taught 3 times! at least…)
- “Origami for the People” project with Grue Bicolore/humpless harlequin heron by Philip Chapman-Bell taught & managed by Mélisande*, installed on Sunday in nearby park
- all the Swiss German people who tried hard and speak French
- the convention book: 25 creators, 41 models and 1 article (written in French and translated to English), book is available on Amazon [links are at the end of this blog]
- super tasty Cake aux Châtaines by Marlyse (gluten & lactose free)
FB of Evelyne, Origami Geneve website (photos taken by Marlyse)
Melisande* a fait l’album suivant :
https://www.flickr.com/photos/melisande-origami/albums/72177720307641377
Super ce petit compte rendu
les photos sur ma page facebook ainsi que sur mon site ont été prises par Marlyse
Je vais ajouter le lien pour ton site et aussi pour ton FB! Merci beaucoup 🙂