About Stone Soup

In the classic tale, curious villagers add small ingredients to a boiling pot, turning a simple stone into a magnificent feast. That is the exact spirit of our camp. Every so often, we come together to build an event you might call a creative playground, an experience design laboratory, or plainly: a summer camp.

Since we build the entire camp together, everyone brings their own 'ingredient' to the mix. You might host a deep-dive workshop, playtest a bizarre new game, step into a live-action narrative, or simply bring a great playlist, a listening ear and enthusiasm. By blending the passions of folks from all walks of life, we co-create a wildly playful weekend that nobody could have planned on their own. Come stir the pot with us.

"Prrr ta lie loe!" 

What’s that?! The joyous cry of the Krullevaar! An extraordinarily rare bird, born from a giant orange egg and covered in, that’s right, not feathers, but a chaotic coat of colorful curls!

Sprung from the mind of famous Dutch children’s book writer Annie M.G. Schmidt, this peculiar birdie will be the mascot of this Soup. Whimsically wobbling on its long legs, it will help us bring our inner children out for play. 

You are invited!

Stone Soup has been bringing humans together for the past 8 years, with editions across USA, The Netherlands, France, Germany, Poland, Romania, Portugal and Australia.

You are hereby cordially invited to create, experience and play at Stone Soup The Netherlands 2026. Together with ±35 enthusiast from all walks of life, we will build a 4-day creative camp with connections and experiences that will stick with you for a lifetime.

We will create workshops and experiences with and for each other. We’ll share responsibilities by organising vegetarian meal experiences, cleaning, and being safe.

Camp Schedule

To give you a first feel of what the Soup will be like, here’s our camp schedule! In complete Zomerkamp style, we have reserved space for some big collective games.  As usual, we’ll co-create a collective opening and closing, we’ll have a generous amount for ad-hoc co-creation, and we’ll share collective (did someone say experience!?) meals in between. In Zomerkamp style, every day we’ll have one big collective experience: Het Avondspel, Levend Stratego and De Bonte Avond!

Thursday Arrival
Evening: Arrive by 7pm and get a good night's rest

Friday Cauldron
morning: Opening & Experience Design 101
afternoon: Co-created soup-time
evening: Collective evening game

Saturday Soup
morning: Co-created soup-time
afternoon: Group game in the forrest (levend stratego)
evening: Co-created soup-time

Sunday Digestion & Closing
morning: Co-created soup-time
afternoon: Preparation for the evening
evening: De Bonte Avond (talent show) & closing

Monday Departure
morning: Cleaning party, leave no later than 10am

The Community & Guides

Get excited about extraordinary experiences? Join a community of 30 talented designers, entrepreneurs, and artists for four days of co-creating immersive and transformative experiences at a historic homestead surrounded by private forest. 

Your Stone Soup guides for this camp will be:

Maria Wielenga - Creator Extraordinaire
Pim Schachtschabel - Architect, designer
Thomas Steigenga - Immersive eating orchestrator

Activities: What would you like to create?

From storytelling, design workshops, LARPs, dancing and immersive improv theatre to a very playful edition of capture the flag — it's ours for the making, and ours for the taking.
You're are encouraged to create and facilitate interactive experiences. The first Stone Soup, in California, evoked a range of experiences, from storytelling and design workshops to immersive closets and LARPs.

Once you’ve paid and confirmed your spot, we’ll connect you with one of the guides to find out what this can be.

What experiences are you curious to create?

Share Cost

Stone Soup is not a business, it’s a community. No one gets a profit and all left-over money will be refunded. Roughly cost distribution is 40% groceries & chef, 25% venue, 20% creative supplies, 10% scholarships, and 5% miscellaneous.

There are three types of tickets:

• Normal camping ticket - €266 (0/30 available)
  Bring your own tent & gear

• Scholarship camping ticket - €133 (0/2 available)
  50% discount for those with less financial means

• Guide camping ticket - €0 (0/3 available)
  Commit to initiate and guide the camp

Put the "òòò" into Vòòòòòrpret

A vital ingredient to a Zomerkamp is Voorpret (dutch for pre-fun). From our on-line pre-gathering we’ll put you into a team and invite you to design one of the following 

• A Meal Experience

• The Opening

• Closing Ceremony & Bonte Avond (co-created cabaret)

• Avondspel (evening game)

• Levend Stratego (human stratego)

• Experience Design 101

A note on the food: we’ll have a chef, so you’ll only be taking care of the experience. All meals are vegetarian and take dietary restrictions into account.

Practice the principles

Creating Stone Soup takes vulnerability, trust, and leaps of faith.  All are expected to practice these principles to ensure we're playing by the same rules. 

Enthusiastic Consent
Only do when the doing is rewarding, not because of peer pressure or hope of a future reward. Create space for opting-out. We honor the "law-of-two-feet": you have two feet and can walk away or join at any time.

Radical Curiosity
Stone Soup is for people of all identities, backgrounds, and beliefs. Support differences in opinions, emotions, and feelings. This is an invitation to show your "krullevaar feathers"—widen your horizons by connecting with those you normally wouldn’t and shedding the masks of the default world.

Collective Escalation
Practice "Yes, and" give confirmation of what’s working well, be inspired by it, and add on to it. Avoid a negating “No, But” attitude. We move beyond the individual to create something larger than the sum of our parts

Do-acracy
Do, or it won't happen. Transformation derives from action. This entire retreat is yours for the taking. There's no democracy, there's only do-acracy. Reward action, early prototypes and failure is a must.

Flexible Hierarchy
We are a community of mature individuals where leadership is a temporary task, not a status. Hierarchies must stay fluid; step up to lead when the moment calls, but actively create space for others to take the lead in turn.

Two Practical Guidelines

• Minimize device-use in communal areas, leave them in your own room/space/tent

• Maximum sobriety, we don’t cater alcohol, we celebrate sobriety and getting high on our natural supply

Great! I’d love to join, what now?

1. Sign up via the link before May 16

2. We’ll aim to be able to have all sign-ups join, however it frequently happens there’s more sign-ups than available spaces. We believe a random selection is the best we can do, while accommodating a balance in gender and new/old-Soupers. A handful of applicants will be directly selected by the initiators.

3. We’ll communicate about the results on May 18.

4. You’ll have one week to pay and confirm your spot.

5. On July 23rd 19:00 CEST we’ll have a kick-off call.

Contact Stone Soup