Our new member of the Kollektive, Axel Bunnik

Axel joins the Kollective

A warm welcome to Axel joining the YoungIMPULS project!

What makes Axel, Axel?

I feel I’m a late bloomer. I don’t know why, but the nice thing about late bloomers is they tend to flower for a longer time than those that come earlier in the year. I like to choose things for myself; sometimes that can lead to a struggle and you lose people along the way, but it also means that I feel good about myself. I’m a reflective person, I self-reflect all day, in fact my kids do the same. I like being that way, it means I connect with others, making conscious choices about how I show up.

I’m a father of two sons, born 2006 and 2005. I was relatively older becoming a father at 46 years old.

Me and my work

Before becoming a parent, I traveled the world. I love to do so by bicycle, taking cycling vacations to Thailand, New Zealand the United States spending a few weeks at a time in each country. In France, I became known as the ‘bike repair man’ by US cyclists who for some reason didn’t know how to fix their bikes. I was always the one with the greasy hands.

I love adventure and I find myself sometimes wanting to do too much, so I rein myself in by saying: “ do what you need to do and don’t get distracted ” – the problem is there is always so much life beyond the front door !

I play the bass, what I love about that is that as a bassist in the band you’re the one responsible for the ‘dance,’ blending harmony with rhythm – this reflects something about how I am in life.

My company, Fat Elephant

www.fatelephant.nl

I work intuitively and creatively giving people lots of room to be themselves and discover their own qualities. I also bring trust and I reckon most of the time you wouldn’t even notice me; it’s a bit like the bass in music, without it ’the dance’ just wouldn’t happen. In spite of my corporate work being mostly about sales, I’m not the kind of person that buys into the ‘push, push, push!’ sales rhetoric. As with KOLIMBRI, I work in a way that is relational, even if it’s about sales, my belief is the relationship-building is fundamental.

Axel and YoungIMPULS

I love to help people to connect with Dutch community, especially working with refugees to help them find their own way; it’s not about changing themselves, rather it’s about how we can collectively find ways to live together in such a way that the Netherlands becomes our shared home. Making these connections to one another through using culture and art feels exciting.

My favorite Curiously Connected Cards

When I first saw the Cards, I felt drawn to the Butterfly – it represents something about what’s possible when chaos is allowed to be there. It’s also colourful, always light and you can’t blow it away. The butterfly folds its wings when it’s windy and stormy, then opens them up again to flutter about – so resilient for such a small being. Elephant is my second choice: you can see from my company’s name fat elephant, that I’m connected to them. They’re very social creatures. Something also about that old adage the ‘elephant in the room’ is important. Huge-bodied as they are, elephant has the capacity to break everything, yet it also reminds us that we can’t really progress unless we talk about the things that really matter, and sometimes it’s the fat elephant staring right at us.

Me and the Collective

I feel there is some direction that I can give to the Kollective around creating and bringing together creative minds. My first step though is to get to know people better, so that the Kollective feels like our mutual home. What would nourish me? Tickle my brains! I love the bandwidth of ages and perspectives that the YoungIMPULS project is already bringing me.

What helps me Thrive?

Put simply, it’s being myself and making space for one another; listening with honesty.

Our new member of the Kolimbri Kollektive

Esmee Russell, The Change Makers’ Coach.

I help people understand and develop who they are, how they relate to others, and how that ripples into the world.

To do this, I draw upon Transactional Analysis and use this as a foundation for 1-2-1 coaching & team coaching. I also lead and facilitate conversations with public sector companies, B-corps, and charities to increase psychological safety at work and promote a beneficial corporate culture.

Our new member of the Kolimbri Kollective

We’d love to introduce you to Fleur Désirée Roovers,

Born and raised in Rosendaal, Netherlands, close to the Belgian border, I’m 29 years old.

I moved to Nijmegen to study Cultural Anthropology at 19 years old – ” the best decision I ever made. ” It’s taught me so much: how to work closely with people, to interview and understand them, and gather qualitative data – it’s like diving into someone else’s world.

I’ve been fortunate to work on some amazing projects in the Netherlands and in other countries, particularly around the sense of belonging for people who are migrants. For example, during my Bachelor’s degree I conducted research in Ghana looking at the meaning of money in a Pentecostal Church. Although most people in the congregation didn’t have much to spare, it seemed that they were expected to donate a rather large amount of their income to the church. As it turned out, for many people donating money to the church wasn’t so much a financial act as it was a spiritual act in order to strengthen their relationship with God.

Migration, belonging, gender and religion have been continuous threads woven through much of my project work, including my pre-Masters. In my Masters degree I worked with young people with migration backgrounds, living in neighborhoods that had stigmas around being “difficult.” I gathered a combination of video, stories, soundscapes to gather into an exhibition; one of the things it showed me was an understanding of how we can live besides people, yet live with total misconceptions about who they are – many of those young people found ways to step beyond those stigmas.

I have also enjoyed working in a café with people with a distance from work, and another role guiding young people in a Young Impact project, later becoming an employee there.

Me and Kolimbri’s YoungIMPULS project

I returned from travels last 2023 and saw the vacancy for facilitator roles on the YoungIMPULS project – arts and working with young people is right up my street, so I’m delighted to be part of the team.

My favorite Curiously Connected Cards

I have two: Cat and the Bees, recognizing both beings within me: I love cats, they just have a way of doing their own thing, relaxing, sitting, sleeping for hours, they seem to be able to follow their impulses naturally, wandering without a purpose. On the other side, Bee represents the parts of me that love bright colours, being busy, practical and outcome-oriented – I love to have a clear purpose.

Fleur and the Kollective

I feel I bring to the Kollective experience working with young people and the topic of connecting across cultural boundaries speaks to me. I have the capacity to be both analytical, to work with larger concepts and then in the next moment to zoom in on the detail of interactions between people. In short, seeing the overview and the practicalities.

What helps me thrive

Discovering new things: projects, people, traveling to different places and cultures. I get itchy feet when I become too set in my ways. I once had a tutor in anthropology who said: “don’t fall in love with your own ideas!” which captures the frustrating but also inspiring aspects of the work I love to do.

Our new member of the Kolimbri Kollective

Dimitra Frangos,

Upholstery, Soft Furnishings and Creativity Courses

Dimitra’s passion is as a maker, she raises awareness of the value of fabric as a resource and its potential for re-use around the home. When you buy an item of clothing or fabric for your home, you make a very personal choice. Dimitra aims at making her re-use personal too. In her hands and with her imagination, fabrics with sentimental value become beautiful, meaningful artworks. Leftover wood and fabric become quirky, individual pieces of furniture.

For Kolimbri, Dimitra is making stunning one-off pouches for our Curiously Connected Cards, each made from upcycled and vintage materials. They’ll soon be on sale in Kolimbri’s webshop .