Culture of Regeneration. Research on happiness on the Wrocław Old Sewage Treatment Farm

The future is the only place where fact can meet fiction, and science and art are on an equal footing

Culture of Regeneration is a project largely devoted to and inspired by the ecosystem of old sewage treatment farm in Breslau / Wrocław. It is a huge organism within the city limits, where, over many years of operation, a wetland has been created. Today it is threatened by drought, which is changing the living conditions there. The project includes various activities, such as an exhibition and a program of accompanying events, as well as walks, meetings, more or less formal outdoor events, inquiries and interviews, as well as subtle interventions in the field. These activities involve creative, scientific and activist communities. We create a social network of relationships between specialists in various scientific and creative fields, and we also exchange embodied knowledge, transferred to other people during intimate walks, in direct experience, “on a living organism”. We operate within the framework of a municipal cultural institution, BWA Wrocław.

What did we learn from each other by spending time together in meadows and wetlands?

This is what our latest project talks about, in which we develop the knowledge and experience gained from our activities at the old former sewage treatment farm. The project is called “Laboratory For Happiness Research. After comfort” and is carried out with the support of the Goethe-Institut Warschau. It was initiated by Bogna Świątkowska as part of the BęcZmiana Foundation and in cooperation with the Zentrum fur Kunst und Urbanistik in Berlin. Urban soil regeneration is a topic that will lead us to the creation of a prototype that will not only co-produce knowledge, but also translate that knowledge into practice together with Polish and German partners from the fields of science and business.