Myvillages

30/04/2026

In March Wapke and Inez from Myvillages and got a Wild Card to do a workshop in the course “Methods for Redesigning Resilient Farms and Food Landscapes.” There, we presented and put into practice the “Free Your Inner Cow” methodology. This methodology aims to activate (inner) ways of thinking by exploring images of cows and landscapes through non-verbal learning methods, such as drawing and observing. After a meditation, all 35 students in the room made connections to their “inner cows”, 🐄 and they were grazing - no visibility but yes ! they were there - after that we invited the participants to spend a few minutes looking at a sprig of hay and to draw it. We explored the differences between an analytical way of describing and a participatory way of describing. We concluded by drawing a more abstract version of the sprig of hay while remaining in this participatory mode. We ended with a gallery exhibition - clothes-line style - of the drawn sprigs of hay.

It was great fun to use the methodologies of the “Cow and Landscape” project again, and we thought it was a fantastic group to work with. We thank the course coordinators!

31/12/2025

A few more glimpses of the key events and projects that shaped our year. ✨ We will share a deeper recap and our future plans in the January newsletter.
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Photos:

1. We started working with Kin Museum Kiruna .museum.for.samtidskonst and went on a research trip organised by Maria Lind and Madeleine Collie. We will be part of this research group until 2029. 📷: Wapke Feenstra

2. Reading circle during a day-long journey through the agricultural areas of Leidsche Rijn. The event was part of the Wapke Feenstra’s “Aarden in de Polder” (Rerooting in the Polder) exhibition at Casco Art Institute 📷: .gleizde

3. HAYSTACKS //|\ HEUHAUFEN //|\ SWYLJE — Plein air drawing from the interdisciplinary, interspecies mini-festival “Unfreeze Your Brain”, held on the Alanus campus .wirtschaft and the surrounding Alfter meadows.

4. Kathrin Böhm at “Unfreeze Your Brain” took place in early June. Alanus University of Arts and Social Sciences, 2025. 📷: Till Fischer

5. We are currently presenting installation as part of the exhibition at Opened in June, the exhibition remains on view until January 26. 📷: Wapke Feenstra

6. Bad Cola by Company Drinks , installation view at Arcade Gallery, London. 📷: Arcade Gallery

7. "Aarden in de Polder" installation view of Room 1 at 📷:

8. RSoE visit at an insect laboratory with artworkers and researchers, led by Inez Dekker , Wageningen University 📷: .gleizde

9. Village creativity in Zburazh: pop-up exhibition at a bus stop. 📷:

10. Company Drinks at the Frieze Art Fair in October.📷:

11. Rogovka village in full swing, during a visit in early July. 📷: .gleizde
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Wishing you all a happy, rooted and inspiring New Year! 🎉🌱
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16/11/2025

23/06/2025

Undercurrents 🌱🌱🌱

We are currently showing a new installation as part of the exhibition .

The installation addresses the rural as an urban ubiquity and reality - even though marginalised and rarely foregrounded. The exhibition guides through mainly design and architecture based approaches to sustainable futures, and we are very happy to share and show three films that document rural histories, practices and mind-sets in urban environments, which hold precious and future relevant land-based and collective embodied knowledge and desires 🎥Including Company Drinks in London (first shown ), | The Rural Side from Rotterdam (first shown ) and Kassel’s Rural Undercurrents made during .space (first shown ).

“Die Stadt gibt es nicht ohne das Land. Und dennoch denkt die Stadt das Land selten mit. Spürt selten in die eigenen „rural undercurrents“ - das rurale Wesen und Wissen, das ihren Böden, Menschen und Praxen zu eigen ist. Die Filme von Myvillages gehen „rural undercurrents“ in London, Rotterdam und Kassel nach. Sie co-erfassen dokumentieren ländliche Historien und Realitäten mit Bewohner:innen in ihrem städtischen Raum.”

A big thank you to .kraus_ and , Volker Leichtfuss for the photo .wirtschaft the wall size photo during a Master Course and 🙏🏼 to Roberto Tinoco for connecting us to Josef Leiendecker, who provided and delivered the tyres 🚜 Thanks to the amazing technical team for a smooth set up.


 

New EuropeanBauhaus

08/06/2025

„You are romanticising the countryside!“

This was the opening sentence at a public haystack gathering last June. It was sharp like a scythe.

Romanticising the rural, detaching it from the now and further binarising it, is very much what we try not to do. The discussion and unfolding of observations and layers of knowledge that then took place is the reason why we organise haystacks.

They are collective, complex, beautiful, interspecies, multi-providing. Haystacks are closely connected to the land and its agricultural histories, and are made to be taken away.

We are organising two haystacks this June and please come along if you’re nearby 🌾🌾

13 and 14 June
Hay made together with students .wirtschaft where Kathrin is teaching, is used during the Festival as an approach to understand the land we study on. The meadow and the hay made last week become a performance space, a site for biodiversity tours, build your own public furniture and Wapke will be offering haytattoos after her workshops on “rural undercurrents” on Friday and “reconnecting with your inner cow” on Saturday ➡️ Link in bio

28 June
Kathrin has been organising haystack events together with in east London for a while. We meet again on Lammas Land - a former grazing land for local commoners - to spend a day on this marsh land ➡️ Link in bio

📸

01 Watching the sky after a day on Lammas Land - haystacks as the perfect place to connect with rural undercurrents

02 Flyer for the 2025 Lammas Land Community Haystack, design

03
A short video of two hands - warming up with Ida for the scything workshop

04
Programme for the 2025 Haystack

05
Ralf Benner aka Ruhrpotsense adjusting the scutes for a workshop with business management students

06 Scything workshop at Alanus, using a new biodiversity area for scything and hay making in preparation for

07 Hay making on campus

08 Community Herbalist Rasheeqa and musician at the 2024 Lammas Land Haystack

09
Happy organiser duo Ida Fabrizio and Kathrin on Lammas Land 🌱💛🌱

07/05/2025

🌱 inter-rural and trans-local news and updates from Myvillages and the Rural School of Economics🌱

We are sending out newsletters every 5-6 months with a summary of what’s coming up, contributions to exhibitions and publications, introducing long term collaborators and partners, announcements … You can sign-up on our website ⬆️ link.tree

07/05/2025

🌱 inter-rural and trans-local news every 4-6 months🌱

Roughly twice a year we are sending out newsletters with a summary of what’s coming up, contributions to exhibitions and publications, introducing long term collaborators and partners, announcements …

You can sign-up on our website ⬆️ link🌳

29/03/2025

How do you fund and sustain your work? What do we generate and regenerate? How do you keep going in spite of everything? What is stabilising and destabilising us?

is just returning from a gathering of community economy organisers set-up and hosted by and „very much feeling more nourished and supported after a few days of peer learning and sharing the reasons for why we do what we do, and who we align with.“

It was beautiful to be back at .foresta.rovereto and to see how continued efforts to connect research and practice over the years is scaling up by peering-on.

Together with we’ll be taking a few ideas for how to draw and frame the diverse economies at back to London, to make it clearer what we rely on and what we support with our work. Where do different markets come into play, from full on transactional capitalist to not for market at all, and where is market-ing a way of experimenting rather than pushing products.

This gathering connects and continues many years of trans-local practice, nurturing multi-local and pluri-vocal world-building Myvillages has been involved since 2008, often in collaboration with Brave New Alps, .aaa and and to be continued

26/10/2024

OIL
📖publication launch
🗓️Thursday 7 November at 7pm CET
🌱 to mark four years of collaborating with and
Rachel Grant
⬆️ info event and book pdf in link tree
 
Join us for a discussion with OIL publication author and editor Rachel Grant (Fertile ground, Aberdeen), Sam Trotman (Programme & Partnerships Director Scottish Sculpture Workshop, Lumsden, Aberdeenshire), Kathrin Böhm (Myvillages) and Scott Herrett (Just Transition Organiser for Friends of the Earth Scotland and member of Friends of St. Fittick’s Park, Aberdeen).

This publication has developed from ‘Oil as far as the eye can see – Energy regimes in the everyday’ a tour curated and guided by Rachel Grant, that took place across Aberdeen, as part of Myvillages’ Summer Camp titled ‘Who Has the Energy’. The summer camp was commissioned, co-produced and held at Scottish Sculpture Workshop in Lumsden in July 2023, during a four year long collaboration between the two organisations (see the full timeline on the timeline )
Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire have been defined by oil’s discovery offshore in the North Sea. The way oil shapes places is particular. Between villages such as Lumsden and the city of Aberdeen as the gateway to the sector, its impacts are complex and have varying levels of visibility. The launch event extends the local discussions and conversations of the day into a trans-local place of recognising shared practices of refusal and redistribution on collectivised cultural work and shared support structures. 

The event and those involved supports the local fights for a fair and green transition in Aberdeen, Friends of St Fittick’s Park and Tory resident campaign resisting ETZ plans by Aberdeen council ➡️ follow the campaign
 
Text: Rachel Grant and Kathrin Böhm
Editor: Rachel Grant and Alison Scott
Proof-reader: Gerrie van Noord
Design & typesetting: Neil Corall
Printed: Peacock & the worm Aberdeen, 2024
Edition: 500