Stories and inheritance
Things that move through families, peoples, and cultures. The parts of ourselves that arrived before we did.
conversations around memory and belonging · intergenerational work · collective constellations
✦Echoes Through Time
MMXXVI
Hostačov · Czech Highlands
Echoes Through Time
Hostačov · 19–23 August 2026
Five late-summer days suspended somewhere between gathering, ritual, and lucid dream.
We seem to be living with several eras at once.
Futures appear before anyone quite knows what to do with them. Meanwhile things we thought were far behind us, old myths, empires, the old hunger to sort the world into us and them, keep turning up again in new clothes.
Sometimes it feels less like moving forward and more like being stretched between a future that won't wait and a past that won't settle.
We started wondering whether part of the strangeness has to do with time itself. Not only what is happening, but how the past keeps moving through us, and how the future begins taking shape long before it arrives.
We thought it might be worth paying attention together.
What are we carrying that is not ours to keep?
What ancestors are we becoming?
What kinds of time have we forgotten how to keep?
Questions like these don't really yield to being thought about alone in a room. They need other people, and time, and more than one way of knowing — listening, imagining, singing, conversing, wandering, remembering, playing, sensing, making.
We're less interested in arriving at answers than in building the conditions where different kinds of knowing can meet without collapsing into one another too quickly. Most of what follows is an attempt at exactly that.
Ways in
Not all of these will happen. Some are already forming. Some are waiting for the right people. Some may only appear once everyone arrives.
Imagining what wants to come
Not prediction. More like making space for futures before they know exactly what they are.
future visioning · active imagination · scenario work · playful encounters with possibility
Listening below language
There are things we know before we know that we know them. Sometimes the body gets there first.
movement · dance · breath · rest · forms of attention that do not begin with explanation
Philosophy around a table
Questions becoming conversations becoming friendship becoming more questions.
salons · dialogues · late-night terrace conversations · people changing their minds gently
Experiences that do not fit neatly
Dreams. Psychedelic experiences. Strange moments that stayed with us longer than expected.
integration spaces · listening circles · witnessing and reflection
Music, rhythm, and fire
Places where thought loosens a little and people remember they are not alone.
drums by the fire · singing · dancing · instruments appearing unexpectedly
Unexpected combinations
Researchers and children. Founders and mystics. Historians and dancers. People who would not normally find themselves in the same room.
unplanned collaborations · unlikely conversations · temporary worlds
Inhabiting other times
Stepping, lightly or fully, into someone from another age; letting the room hold more than one century at once.
embodied imagination · experiential play · improvisation · temporary worlds
We care a lot about careful curation and strong facilitation.
We care just as much about leaving room for surprise.
We care just as much about leaving room for surprise.
◐the shape of the five days
The shape
Five days, four nights
Five days, four nights, with a shape. It begins held, deepens, and then, for one day, comes loose — before settling again. We've built it the way fairs were once built: most of the year ran at one pace, and the fair was time of a different kind, set apart, when the ordinary order of things was briefly suspended. We've mostly lost that. Echoes is partly an attempt to keep time plural again for a few days.
A quieter thread runs underneath. Across the week, through conversation and workshop and shared imagination, people begin to find themselves inhabiting other times — old pasts, possible futures, the figures we carry and the ones we might become. It builds slowly, and surfaces on Saturday.
- WednesdayArriving
People come through the afternoon. An evening opening to land everyone and set the tone — warm, not solemn. The first long table, the first fire.
- ThursdayGoing deep
The most prepared day. Sessions led by experienced facilitators across the full range — dialogue, movement, contemplative and ritual work, music. If you come for depth and good company, this is where the gathering shows it means it.
- FridayLoosening
The register opens. More experimental, more room for what wants to emerge — and quietly, the day people begin to find who they might become.
- SaturdayThe day out of time
Hard to describe in advance, which is rather the point. The château becomes stranger. Roles loosen, centuries blur, and the place gives itself over to something between a salon, a fair, and a dream — for as long or as little as you choose to step into it. By night it returns to music and fire.
- SundayComing back
A slow morning, a soft closing, time to gather what the days were before carrying them home.
The arc is deliberate. The first days build enough trust and depth that the looseness of Saturday is something to step into rather than perform. Careful curation and strong facilitation, held in balance with real room for surprise.
The house
Hostačov
Hostačov has been many things over the centuries. A fortified manor, a château, a school, almost a ruin, and now something else beginning to take shape.
It sits in the Czech Highlands, about an hour from Prague and far enough away that the city's rhythm starts to fade. High ceilings. Large quiet rooms. Forest paths and meadows. Long tables. Corners that seem built for conversations continuing long after everyone thought they had finished.
This is its first full summer in a new chapter. We are still in the middle of discovering what this place wants to become.
You would be arriving early.
Contributors
Some of the people forming this gathering
A circle is still taking shape. Some names are confirmed, others are in conversation. Many will be revealed closer to the dates.
forming
Placeholder Name
Philosopher · cognitive scientist
A short sentence about what they bring to the gathering and how they might hold a thread of the week.
- · philosophy
- · dialogue
- · meaning
forming
Placeholder Name
Composer · ritual musician
Holds long-form musical journeys. Has been part of late-night rooms where time loosens a little.
- · music
- · ritual
- · fire
forming
Placeholder Name
Movement teacher
Offers slow morning practices and forms of listening that begin below language.
- · body
- · movement
- · attention
forming
Placeholder Name
Futures researcher
Makes space for futures before they know exactly what they are. Not prediction — closer to attention.
- · futures
- · imagination
- · scenarios
Pricing
One price, the whole of it
One price covers your stay, all meals, and the whole programme. Nothing is bought or sold once you're here.
- Camping, your own tentCZK 4,000–6,000
- Glamping, tent providedCZK 6,000–8,000
- Dormitory (up to 8, ensuite)CZK 6,500–8,500
- Shared room (three beds)CZK 10,000
- PatronCZK 35,000+
Prices are per person for the full five days. Within each range you choose your own contribution — the lower end for those for whom cost is a real consideration, the upper end helping carry others and the work of holding all this. The patron option includes a private room for up to two, makes space for someone who couldn't otherwise be here, and is one way, for those who'd like it, to support the work behind Hostačov.
Children under 3 free; 3 and over at half their parent's rate. If even the lower end is a genuine barrier and you still want to be here, write to us — there's an accessibility path, no questions beyond a sentence or two.
Practicalities
- Hostačov · Czech Highlands
- 19 – 23 August 2026
- Up to 200 people
- ~70 indoor capacity · Additional glamping and camping on the grounds
- Intergenerational by design
- English held lightly alongside Czech and other languages
- Full-time vegetarian catering
- Substance-free gathering
- Applications opening soon
Questions