MyVillages

MyVillages is a non-profit organisation founded in 2003 by three artists, aiming to advocate for a new understanding of the rural as a place of and for cultural production. MyVillages’ work addresses the constantly evolving interrelationship between the rural and the urban, by looking at different forms of production, pre-conceptions and power structures. This grant is for the development of the Rural School of Economics, which connects forms of economic and cultural opportunities that are neglected by city-centric thinking, challenging the notion that the art and human rights worlds are an urban and elitist project. The School will build relationships and exchanges through arts and culture as a civic and social endeavour to overcome constructed binaries – such as urban-rural, us-them, teacher-learner – in order to resist politically motivated, simplification, nationalisation and individualisation. The School will exist across three to four rural communities per year, and connect rural knowledge with critical art practice in different regions in Europe.