We have launched the Lumbungsden taster programme with 6 weeks of workshops run by local people, the themes of which are based on ideas that were generated at our launch event. Find out more about this programme soon.
For the first BE PART fieldwork at SSW we are be working with Kathrin Böhm and Wapke Feenstra from artist collective Myvillages. Over 2 years we are working together on an international trans-local programme called The Rural School of Economics.
Myvillages understands economies as the way we assign value to things, get access to means and organise relationships. Economies are a social and cultural phenomenon and part of our everyday. They ask, how can economies benefit those who make them?
A School is any form of organised gathering where we learn and create mutually. In The Rural School of Economics we will create a space for bringing together a broad range of rural knowledge and skills – things we do in our daily lives in rural villages and the countryside – and connect this with other rural communities across the world. Learning will take place where this knowledge is applied and these different economies take place. The classrooms will be the fields, sheds, tracks, village halls and living rooms of the students and teachers (who are one and the same).
The Rural School of Economics sets out to value and share the decentralised, self-organised and creative ways we get together and live. We will explore how everyday lived experience of the rural is key to a collective, anti-capitalist and ecologically conscious future, and how a rural mindset need not to be defined by geography. We have ambitions for this project to grow into a long-term networked alliance of people, groups and cultural/ civic organisations who connect traditional and progressive economic cultures.
If you live close to SSW and are interested in taking part, or just want to hear more about The Rural School of Economics, please get in touch! We would love to hear from you. Contact Jo – arts[at]ssw.org.uk or phone the office on 01464 861372.
About Myvillages
Myvillages is an artist group founded in 2003 by Kathrin Böhm (UK / DE), Wapke Feenstra (NL) and Antje Schiffers (DE). Their work addresses the evolving relationship between the rural and the urban, looking at different forms of production, pre-conceptions and power relationships. Myvillages initiates and organises international artistic projects which range from small-scale informal presentations to long-term collaborative research projects, from work in private spaces to public conferences, from exhibitions to publications and from personal questions to public debate. Read more about MyVillages here, and see The Rural School of Economics on their website.
BE PART is made possible with the support of the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union.
The Rural School of Economics is made possible by the European Cultural Foundation – Culture of Solidarity Fund, Rausing Trust, Mondriaan Fund and the Stimuleringsfonds voor Creatieve Industrie.
