Residence Retreat
November 2nd - November 8th, 2026 • Cape Town, South Africa
How can we harvest with our souls? What lies beneath a product’s history? How can we transform traditions into novelties?
Residence is a community-driven retreat rooted in local ingredients and seasonal produce. Guided by farmers and the land itself, you are invited to explore what lies beneath an ingredient’s history, harvesting not only with your hands, but with your soul. You honor tradition while gently pushing it into the unknown, transforming memory into novelty.
Through cooking, study, and holistic experimentation, you immerse yourself in felt experiences and shared discovery. You step into a world that shifts, evolves, and surprises. As an ode to the ingredients and their stories, you will create recipes both collectively and individually, which capture your journey of exploration, transformation, and unforgettable memory.
Retreat Manifesto
In Residence, we share the joint need for felt experiences.
Learning through exploring the unknown, with an infinite amount of inspiration.
Residence almost sounds like resonance , it should feel like your own known world, full of its own memories and traditions, is being pushed in to the unknown.
For the main force behind the spirit of Residence, we aim to be guided by local’s ingredients, cook with them, study their history and experiment with their culinary & holistic possibilities, and ultimately transmute them in to dishes.
As an ode to the ingredients, we will, in group & individually, create recipes that will be collected into a book. This book will encapsulate our joint mission of unforgettable explorative memories.
From making biltong, to harvesting fynbos and making our own essential oils.
From milking cows,
to cheese making, to butter slapping, to intuitive cooking.
Guided by a select team of facilitators, including chefs, botanists, farmers & creative thinkers, your ideas will be pushed in to the collective fruiting body and become tools for navigating the complexities of daily living.
Residence is a community-driven experience focused on local ingredients and seasonal produce. The main thread runs through the most natural part of co-living: food. The land around us - fields, rivers, mountains, ocean - becomes our classroom. We come here to explore, experiment, learn, and share what we discover.
Throughout the week, guests cook both independently and in intuitive small groups, sometimes guided by the chef. We spend time together getting to - the landscape, the products, and the techniques - tasting, testing, and building skills in a hands-on way.
On the final day, everyone cooks together using fresh, locally produced ingredients. We gather for a big Residence dinner at a long community table - each person contributing something to the meal.
Program
What your days will look like
Workshops
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Intuitive cooking
Upon arrival guests will harvest ingredients together with chef Claudia and gather around at a farm-to-table meal.
This collaborative experience gives you a taste and insight into the activities of the following days.
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Cheese and butter making
Farm-based workshop: start early and join the milking team in the parlour to learn how to milk a cow. After milking, we’ll walk the cows out to pasture and enjoy a coffee in the field with fresh warm milk.
Using the morning’s milk, you’ll then learn the basics of natural cheese and cultured butter making. You’ll make your own cheese and butter during the workshop and take both home with you.
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Fynbos harvesting
Early morning mountain walk to harvest fynbos - the Western Cape’s unique floral kingdom. We’ll explore the land together, learn how to harvest with care, and gather plants for distillation.
Then we go straight into the making: creating essential oils while everything is still fresh. You’ll see every step and learn the full process - from landscape to plant, from plant to oil.
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Wine tasting & vermouth making
At Residence, Adriaan will facilitate a tasting of his latest wines — and host a hands-on blending moment.
Guests will fill their own bottles with a base wine infused with herbs and spices, making their own vermouth to take home.
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Sauna journey
Sennia will lead a guided sauna ritual using herbal steam made from herbs collected near the farm, followed by an oak whisk massage.
It’s a sensory journey designed for deep relaxation, renewal, and connection - with the land carried into the heat through scent, steam, and touch.
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Wheel of Balance
Through this unique workshop you will explore the Wheel of Balance & Self-Relationship, exploring questions about your life, your hopes and dreams, and mapping out a strategic yet realistic plan for moving forward.
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Scent & sound journey
Creating space for the mind and body to settle into ease, the worlds of the senses entwine seamlessly in this multisensory experience. You are invited to move through layers of scent, sound and meditation - discovering the receptive depth that stretches across a tapestry of feeling. A journey of awareness, these modalities bridge consciousness between physical and non-physical realities, those of the present and those of the mind, allowing brain waves to shift into a dreamlike state.
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Sailing trip
A four-hour sailing trip off the coast of Cape Town offers a calm closing moment with the city in view from the ocean. Fresh catch of the day sashimi meal included.
Meet the facilitators
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Lars is an intuitive artist whose creative work naturally brings people together. Inspired by travel, local traditions, community, and food, each journey has shaped his understanding of collective meaning and belonging.
His interests span colour, travel, local traditions, community, and cooking, with each journey deepening his understanding of how people gather, share, and create meaning together.
After a world trip last year, Lars felt a strong desire to distill everything he had learned about communal living and collective experience. This vision deepened at Japan's Ishinoko Festival, where he was moved by the intentional unification of people who began as strangers.
This love for bringing unfamiliar people together gave birth to Residence. The facilitators he chose were initially strangers themselves, who through the process became close friends and are now like family.
With a background in event hosting and creative production, his new project Residence became a natural culmination: an invitation into a shared space of curiosity, openness, and playfulness.
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Lars met Chef Claudia at Ishinoko Festival in Takigahara in Japan last year where he fell for both her energetic spirit and her extensive expertise. Chef Claudia is a great example of a modern “donna universale”. Not only is she absolutely hilarious, she’s also an incredible illustrator, and on top of all of that, a doctor!
A follow-up visit was required, so Claudia visited the last RESI Retreat in March, where she quickly took on roles and became an integral part of the retreat experience. Inspired by her presence, Lars recognized that she should be the next chef for RESI 2.0.
Having extensive experience in various roles in the hospitality industry, Chef Claudia will guide you local South-African ingredients during your stay, transforming them into dishes, drinks and memories.
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Camilla’s Cape Fynbos Oils have been part of our world since 2017, recognised for their powerful, almost spiritual presence. Snowbush — a locally endemic wild rosemary — remains a firm favourite, loved for its distinctive character and sense of place. Camilla is a fynbos botanist and one of South Africa’s most respected practitioners, celebrated for the depth of knowledge and care she brings to her craft.
Fynbos
A distinctive type of vegetation found only on the southern tip of Africa. It includes an extraordinary range of plant species, particularly small heather-like trees and shrubs.
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Maria van Zyl is the owner of Vergesig Farm, a family-run farm set high in the Piket-Bo-Berg Mountains, bordering a beautiful nature reserve rich with indigenous flora and wildlife. The farm is organic and operates with biodynamic farming systems, taking a holistic approach that supports soil health, biodiversity, and animal wellbeing as one connected ecosystem.
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Adriaan van Zyl is an independent winemaker with roots in the Swartland, guided by a quiet devotion to the vineyard and the slow magic of the cellar. When he’s not shaping wines of his own, he’s at Vergesig Farm — living the seasons, working the land, and letting nature set the pace.
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David Plenderleith is an artist, Reiki practitioner and sanctioned Medicine Guide. His professional training took place at the KaosPilots school in Switzerland where he studied an Earth Wisdom tradition called the Council Guide Training.
“Both profound and highly practical, these teachings are from an oral tradition of indigenous peoples of the Americas, who understood what was needed for humans to live together in harmony while at the same time honoring individual freedom and self authority. In this understanding, we are all sacred beings - along with 'all our relations', meaning all other life forms in our universe.”
Through the study of different medicine wheels, David travels with a bundle of wisdom which is offered as maps of consciousness in ceremonial settings. David is passionate about group facilitation and helping individuals and organisations realise their fullest potential.
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Sennia conducts group sauna ceremonies blending traditional slavic techniques with a contemporary, sensory approach.
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Henry will lead the group on sailing experience along the coast on the last day
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Jude is a long-time friend and an inspirational connector in his community in Cape Town. His generational knowledge of Cape Town’s land, water, and culture helps us connect more deeply to the meaning behind “local”. Jude will “wys” us the good stuff.
Retreat location
Kleinkloof Farm • Piketberg, Cape Town, 7550, South Africa
Residence found a place that can hold a whole week - not as an escape, but as an immersion. Kleinkloof Farm is integrated into the landscape of a fertile, working area, where olives grow and the rhythm of the land is real. It sits against the Piketberg Mountain range, with wide, breathtaking views across the Rooi Karoo towards the Winterhoek mountains.
It’s also the kind of place that naturally becomes a small community. Close enough to gather, cook, and share long tables - and spacious enough to retreat, rest, and let new thoughts settle. This is where we live together for a while: exchanging knowledge, learning something new each day, and building the experience as a group, step by step.
Accommodation
The property includes five cottages with a maximum capacity of 16 guests. Each guest is provided with a private bedroom. Guests booking together may choose a discounted paired-booking option, with either a shared double bed or two single beds.
Every cottage has its own equipped kitchen - a small sanctuary where Residence continues between the main group sessions: self-made breakfasts, shared prep, small food experiments, late-night conversations.
Each cottage also has a private terrace with an intimate, tucked-away feel; some include splash pools or hot tubs, and a few offer dedicated outdoor areas for braai evenings and gathering under the open sky.
Pricing
Early bird (until July 31st): 2.000€ p.p.
Regular: 2.200€ p.p.
Paired bookings receive a 200€ discount
*Discounted rates are available for South African residents, and flexible payment plans are also possible. Please reach out for more information.
What’s included
Accommodation for 6 nights at Kleinkloof Farm
Daily meals, snacks and refreshments
5 expert-led workshops (cheese making, butter making, vermouth, fynbos harvesting, Wheel of Balance)
Essential oil + custom scent creation
Sound journey
Sauna ritual
Optional guided hike
4-hour sailing trip
What’s not included
Travel to/from the venue
Insurance
Personal expenses
Arrival & Departure
Arrival — Please arrive by 14:00 on Monday, November 2nd.
Departure + closing arc
On the last day after breakfast there will be a small Residence market with the facilitators, so you can take a piece of the week home with you.
Check-out is around 12:00 on Sunday, November 8th.
There will be a sailing trip as well on the last day after check-out.
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A 500 euro non-refundable deposit is required to secure your booking.
The remaining balance is due within 72 hours of booking confirmation.
If the balance is not received within 72 hours, we reserve the right to release your spot and apply the cancellation terms below.
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All cancellations must be submitted in writing to info@soulcollective.eu and are effective on the date received.
Refunds (based on retreat start date: November 2nd 2026)
On or before October 3rd 2026(more than 30 days before start):
Refund of all payments minus the 500 euro deposit.From October 4th 2026 onwards(30 days or less before start):
No refunds (100% of the total retreat price is forfeited).
No-shows / early departures
No refunds will be issued for no-shows, late arrivals, or early departures.
Transfers
You may transfer your booking to another person provided that:
You notify us in writing at info@soulcollective.eu
Any price difference is paid (if applicable)
If We Cancel or Reschedule
If the retreat is cancelled by us, you will receive a full refund of all payments received, or you may choose to transfer to a rescheduled date or future retreat.
We are not responsible for costs you may incur for flights, travel, visas, insurance, or other expenses—please ensure you have travel insurance.
Travel Insurance
We strongly recommend purchasing comprehensive travel insurance that covers trip cancellation, medical emergencies, travel disruption, and unforeseen circumstances.
Do you have any questions?
Get in touch with us below and we’ll get back to you ASAP!
