In cooperation with PLAY + ART I’m working out a format for a workshop that is to be pitched to hospitals. The idea is to create Big Buddies for kids that have to stay in a hospital for a while. I’ll ask the kids to draw the kind of friend they would want to have with them during their stay. From the drawing I create a Big Buddy. Setting this idea up, I realised that what I am really doing is investigating the concept of  ‘troost’. Troost translates to ‘comfort’ or ‘consolation’ – but I’m not very satisfied with these translations. Comfort is too material a thing, like creature comforts or comfortable surroundings. Consolation is something we put in the balance to compensate for something else, something bad. Where troost is a spiritual thing, a quality one finds inside. Troost can be inspired by something outside but it is not a quod-pro-quo thing. Finding troost is an essential thing in life-  if it is to be lived in spite of setbacks, problems,  illness and death.

Later: project could be called ‘de vorm van troost’  i.e. ‘the shape of comfort’.