Meeting Gardens. Practicing the rural through art and care for sustainable and inclusive perspectives. 2024

curated by ife collective as part and with the support of the European Solidarity Corp
2024, Vicenza

We wish to participate in the bustling of organisms - both organic and inorganic - that make the soil aromatic. We learn to feel rurality through our bodies, which establish situated approaches to care, while moving through critical and anti-nostalgic enchantment.

Meeting Gardens. Practicing the rural through art and care for sustainable and inclusive perspectives, now in its second edition, is a hybrid annual project based on non-formal approaches to collectively imagine sustainable and inclusive ways of living and acting in and with the territory, through active and reciprocal exchange with local rural realities. The project begins with Meeting Gardens alternative program, a collective pathway designed to activate imaginative practices that open perspectives and probe the complex fabric of reality, in order to envision alternative, sustainable, and inclusive trajectories of living and acting in and with the territory, acknowledging its complexity as a living, moving subject, while also engaging with the broader contemporary context. Meeting Gardens alternative program welcomes a community of participants to experiment with practices within gardens and activities between orchards and agricultural realities. Together, participants share skills, knowledge, and expertise related to the earth and the languages of art, embracing mutualistic and reciprocal approaches, to become active and responsible members of both human and non-human communities. In September and October, the first results of the process take shape in Meeting Gardens Festival * radicrille, an itinerant festival throughout the city of Vicenza, aiming to connect cultivation-culture practices between the city's gardens and orchards, bringing different communities closer to new ways of making the world. The project concludes with the creation of a collective publication reflecting on the entire process.

Here you can discover:

Meeting Gardens Festival * radicrille

The exhibition Slow Metabolism by Valeria Carrieri

Guests of Meeting Gardens alternative program and Meeting Gardens Festival * radicrille: Laura Rositani, Lisa Mazza, Giordana Mascarello, Davide Primucci, and Jessica Canella from the Comunità Vicentina per l'Agroecologia, Chiara Spadaro, Emil Cantieri, Tulls Primultini, Falive, Luca Conte, and Fulvia Larena, Antonio Cantele, Valeria Carrieri, Gabriele Biondi, Matteo Trentin, Giulia Capraro, Valentina Fin, Francesca Migone, Elisabetta Rattalino, Nour Ouayda, Gerard Ortín Castellví, Joel Penner and Anna Sigrithur, Rory Pilgrim, Mistura queer, Kobra Mulata, and Carlotta Novella from The School of Filò.

The Meeting Gardens network currently includes: 100 Orti, Apicoltura La Girosa, Azienda Agricola Lisiera, Biblioteca La Vigna, Bosco di Cà Alte e Lanerossi, Bosco e Cascina Carpaneda/Comunità Vicentina per l'Agroecologia, Casa di Cultura Popolare, Caracol Olol Jackson, Ceramic Pavillion/Le Nove Hotel, Cooperativa Insieme, Corte Bertesina, Indomiti Vini, I frutti di Marta, La Campagnola, Oddkin Flower Farm & Studio, Pan Ti Voglio, Porto Burci, veloCittà, and Villa Angaran San Giuseppe.

Photos by Giulia Capraro and Giulia Deganello
Graphics by Supernulla Studio