Meditation and the Palette of Emotions

This workshop explores the traditional process of assembling a herbarium specimen, inspired by Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s collections. Participants learn scientific techniques for pressing and mounting dried plants on old paper, practice botanical labelling and nomenclature, and select specimens to create a personal herbarium sheet. The session examines preservation methods, identification principles and the historical context of Rousseau’s approach, combining practical skills with scientific insight to produce a lasting botanical object.

In French.

This interactive memory challenge invites participants to test their memory while exploring practical ways to preserve biodiversity based on Geneva’s municipal strategy. Players match “before-and-after” images that illustrate individual and institutional actions, and each correct pair reveals concise information explaining the measure. The activity examines themes such as habitat restoration, species-friendly practices, urban greening and policy responses, helping participants understand the impact and rationale behind everyday and organisational conservation choices.

This lecture explores aquatic plants documented in Geneva’s scientific collections and publications, some dating back to the early nineteenth century. It examines taxonomy, ecology and historical methods used to study species adapted to wet environments. The session presents emblematic taxa — green algae, diatoms and Littorella uniflora — and discusses their ecological roles, identification challenges and the insights these historical records reveal about environmental change and freshwater biodiversity.

In French.