A Crazy Night With Cheesy Goodbyes And A Big Thanks To Our Lasercutting Knights!

To make our friendship official Manon filled in our little Nerdlabfrienship book.

Name:
Manon

Birth place:
Paris🗼

Levelled up in:
The north of Berlin

Academic side quest:
First a Bachelor in Sociology. I spent time reading Michel Foucault, Judith Butler and Pierre Bourdieu and now permanently see the world through the lenses of power dynamics and social inequality.💼📖

Later finished Fashion & Costume Design.🧵

Theory 🤝 creativity.

Creative origin story:
Creativity has always been around. My mum introduced me and my sister to different art forms early on, and making things together was simply part of growing up.

Dance, theatre, fashion, music, painting, collage… basically anything involving colours, emotions and expression.🎭🎨

Creative turning point:

During covid, my 12-year amateur soccer career suddenly stopped. A friend suggested skateboarding instead.🛹

This led me to the FLINTA skateboarding community ‘Hera’ in Berlin. Imagine skate sessions with loud speakers, artists everywhere and inspiration bouncing around like an unstoppable ball of lightning.⚡🏳️‍🌈

Soon I started hosting creative workshops for the community. People gathered to talk about things like love, jealousy, gender or forgiveness, while also learning practical skills like zine binding or sewing.

A life lesson:

When a close friend of me passed away, I made a radical decision: to live life fully, create as much as possible and love the people around me with everything i got.🩷

Stumbled into Nerdlab like this:

After the chaos of Berlin, I wanted to experience a smaller city and used Erasmus funding to come to Gent.

The first internship unfortunately turned out to be toxic and exploitative. So I did something important: she set a boundary and left.

I was actually searching for a place called GoBoom but walked right into a kinky crafting workshop.✂️🫦

Not long after that, Nerdlab happily adopted me as an intern.

My biggest contributions to Nerdlab:

• helped build and document the BYOB exhibition
• worked on the graphic toolbox for the Lousbergspark signalisation
• supported events, brainstorms and community dinners
• started the 'Pimp Your Pocket' workshop series about textile techniques like screen printing, vinyl cutting and embroidery
• occasionally convinced people to write poetry and make collages together

Skills unlocked:

Ink/Stitch
Inkscape
Vinyl cutting
Embroidery machines
Communication
And the very valuable skill of boundary-keeping

Favourite community(dinner) memory:

Cooking beetroot burgers with Jannes for a community dinner. Everyone was full, happy and the atmosphere was perfect.

And the cozy Yule celebration.🥳

And of course the legendary BYOCH night, where a truly impressive amount of cheese was consumed.

People appreciation corner

Special shout-out to Ludwig, who was often around working on projects too. At some point it started to feel like we were flatmates sharing snacks, coffee, cigarettes and both silly and deep conversations.

Thank you everyone
Marnix, Bavo, Jens, Tessi, Timothy, Maria, Floor, Thijs, Jasper, Jannes, Robert, Vincent and many others.

“Nerdlab has many different layers, and that’s what makes it so special.”

Future Projects:

I will soon start another internship with a theatre company in Brussels, i will work on costume and set design.

You can follow my adventures here:

Instagram: @monarubi