Resilient practices in the Romanian countryside Statistics show that in 2020 around 78 thousand people moved to the villages from urban centres in Romania, not counting those who have returned home from abroad. In itself, it is not a very telling statistics, as almost double this number moved the other way around and, comparing to other EU countries, Romania still has one of the highest rates of poverty in the rural areas. What is interesting is that the majority of those deciding to “downshift” to the countryside are the middle-class who can afford the telework. They want to reconnect with nature, with their families’ roots, they take classes on permaculture, they exchange advice, photos and business ideas with peers on the many Facebook dedicated groups – the most famous of which, “Moved to the countryside. Life without the clock” counts now 147000 members, having doubled in the year of the lockdown . Within this trend, a special place is occupied by those who make this move as not only an individual life-style, but also trying to be consistent with a sustainable and ecological living with and for larger communities. We are looking at practices that redefine the relationship with the countryside, with land and soil, with nature, with food and natural resources, with the rural communities and also with people in the big cities who are looking for sustainable alternatives to their lives. We are mapping some of these practices: a regenerative farm in Dambovita; an ecological farm that delivers fresh products to people in Bucharest, also in a village in Dambovita county; a community and educational centre built on ecological principles in Mogosoaia; a village eco-touristic campus and co-working space in Banat region, and others. A more in-depth mapping takes place of a series of case-studies on ecological or regenerative farms or gardens, thus focusing this part of the research on a different approach to the land as not only provider of resources but also as a fragile ecosystem that needs to be tendered and respected. We are conducting sociological interviews, interpreting them, we are asking questions about motivations, structure, sustenance, difficulties encountered, awareness of the wider contexts and of the climate change impact. In addition, we are observing with artistic means (video-documents, sketches, drawings, notations), in order to situate these case-studies within a larger picture of emancipatory practices in the relation between people, nature and communities.

Our first seminar will take place online on March 27. Want to be there? The first C4R seminar organised by AAA, Remix the Commons and and other C4R partners and collaborators (CASCO, Tranzit.ro, NetHood) focuses on the concept of resilience governance. The seminar proposes to compare a diversity of experiences of governance within civic cultural institutions as well as within resilience networks at different scales. This will open the field of reflection and experimentation on commons-based resilience through a process of semantic mapping and database creation. Schedule Introduction of the seminar in the context of the Culture for Resilience (C4R) project Presentations of a series of experiences of resilience governance through commons: * ZAD de Notre Dame des Landes (Isabelle Fremeaux, FR) * Fédération Murs à Pêche de Montreuil (Clément Girard, FR) * Agrocite Bagneux (Pascale Maker/ Constantin Petcou, FR) * CLTBruxelles (Sophie Ghyselen, BE) * MOBA Housing SCE (Ana Džokić/ Marc Neelen, RS/NL) * Asilo Filangeri (Angela Osorio, IT) * NetHood (Ileana Apostol, CH) * Transition Vallée de la Bièvre (Simon Burkovic, FR) * R-Urban (Doina Petrescu/Andreas Lang FR/UK) * Transition Town (tbc) * DisCO (Stacco Troncoso, ES) * Remix the commons / Chartes des communs urbains (Frederic Sultan, FR) * femProcomuns (Monica Garriga, ES) Keynotes: * Maria Francesca De Tullio /Assilo Fillangeri (IT) * David Bollier / Schumacher Center (USA) You can register here by next Friday for the link. The seminar will be held in English / French.