The Rewilding Cultures wants to reposition the wild after COVID-19 and focus on inclusivity and ecology within the art, science and technology. A new gaze at this sector is needed and the stop in everything caused by COVID provides us with an uncomfortable, but much needed time for reflection on potential change. We cannot go back to business as usual, especially in terms of polluting and important inclusion issues unaddressed. We need to rewild on terms fit for the present and future.
Within the last 10 years we have witnessed a large growth of various Creative Hubs. They come in many shapes and sizes and operate as initiatives that give participants a social space equipped with technological opportunities, a space where everyone is encouraged to experiment, explore, create and share. The importance of the social and the communal aspect is one of the most important aspects of these Creative Hubs; they are not only places of rapid prototyping and caters to artists’ and makers’ needs, they are so much more than the fabrication machines and tools and their operators. They are places of rich social life and homes of diverse communities. Creative Hubs are now indispensable facilitators of Open and Citizen science and localization of production, new business models, testers and developers of future technologies, as well as places of new and innovative uses of old technologies. They are places of reinvention and innovation in educational, life-long-learning processes.
The partner associations include ART2M / Makery (FR), Bioart Society (FI), Catch (Helsingør Kommune) Center for Art, Technology and Design (DK), Cultivamos Cultura (PT), Ionian University (GR), Radiona (HR) Schmiede Hallein (AT) and Projekt Atol (SI) which leads the project. Rewilding Cultures is co-funded by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union, which aims to support European projects in the field of cultural production and innovation.
For latest news relating to the project, please check the Rewilding Cultures website.
Rewilding Culture builds on the legacy of the Feral Labs Network (FLN), a small-scale Creative Europe project. Feral Labs connected organizers of Temporary Creative Hubs that varied in scope, format and topics, but held a common methodological framework. Most of the activities were carried out in summers of 2019 and 2020. The project manifested in the Feral Labs Node Book #1 – Rewilding Culture publication which was published in 2021.