Waarom we zo blij zijn dat we Auping mogen verwelkomen als Slow Up

Why we're happy to have Auping as a Slow Up partner

When we started working on Slow Up for Humanity, we kept coming back to one simple question: how do we create a society in which there is enough time, space and care for people to live well, without asking more and more from a planet that is already under enormous pressure?

That responsibility cannot rest on citizens alone. We all make choices every day, but the way our society evolves is also shaped by policymakers and by the companies that design, produce and sell the things we use. If we want a liveable future, everyone has a role to play.

That is why we are particularly happy to have Auping on board. As a company that has been working on sustainability and circularity for years, Auping is a natural fit with the questions at the heart of Slow Up. In fact, Auping is our only commercial partner. We made that choice deliberately. We wanted to work with a company whose own work connects meaningfully with the ideas we are putting forward through this campaign.

And there is something wonderfully appropriate about doing this together with a company that makes beds. Because sleep is one of the most basic forms of slowing down. We can organise our days as efficiently as we like, but eventually the body asks us to stop. A bed gives us a place to recover, to read, to talk, to be quiet and, quite simply, to do nothing for a while.

There is also a less obvious connection between a good night's sleep and a liveable planet. Everyone needs a mattress, but what happens to it when we no longer need it? In Belgium, around 1.1 million mattresses are discarded every year, which adds up to 22.000 tons of waste material yearly. That is a huge amount of material ending up in the waste stream. Auping is working to change that with circular design, including the Auping Evolve, a fully circular mattress designed so that its materials can be kept in circulation rather than becoming waste.

Auping has been a certified B Corp since 2020 and has made circularity an important part of its approach to product development. For us, this is exactly the kind of responsibility we want to see more of: companies looking beyond the moment a product is sold and thinking about its entire life cycle.

The partnership will also become very tangible during Slow Up. Auping is providing the 50 mattresses for the overnight experience at the KMSKA. After the night in the museum, these mattresses will be donated to SOS Children's Villages, giving them a second destination instead of simply becoming part of the event's temporary infrastructure.

And then there is the Auping Flagship Store in Antwerp, where we are taking the idea of slowing down quite literally. During the 25-hour Slow Up bed-in, ten duos will get the chance to spend the night in the store. Some will even sleep in the shop window. There will be reading in the evening, coffee and a breakfast pastry in the morning, and a rare luxury in our permanently switched-on society: nowhere you have to be. More info on the sleepover here. 

That is what makes this partnership feel so right to us. Auping is helping us turn a simple bed into a bigger conversation about how we want to live, what we consider enough, and what responsibility looks like when we share a future.

Because sometimes slowing down starts with something as ordinary as going to bed. And sometimes it can make us think about what we want to wake up to.

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