The Confederacy of Villages is an international exchange network that connects five socially engaged art initiatives operating in rural communities across Europe through a programme of artistic residencies and professional exchanges that develop innovative concepts for creative problem-solving and collaborative working outside urban centres. 

Working with art practitioners and craftspeople, the Confederacy’s programme of conjoined skill and knowledge sharing will collaborate with rural communities to develop each village’s economic and creative autonomy, enhancing existing activity with solutions to local needs. Through a series of workshops, seminars, and events, this will be an opportunity to understand how rural communities can remain sustainable and engaging places in which to live, work and visit. The project’s resulting user manual will propose a new anchored framework for how art can better engage with and support rural communities.

Motivated by a detected need for new practical mechanisms which better promote cooperation across Europe’s peripheral regions, the Confederacy will support the circulation of people and skills to nurture a model of mutual care and solidarity. It will reactivate vernacular economies in areas which have proven vulnerable to recent socio-economic transformations, attracting young professionals and entrepreneurship, while producing new imaginaries about forms of life outside urban centres that will empower rural communities.

The Confederacy’s strategy will improve the capacity of cultural agents actively engaging with the rural, providing audiences and creative professionals alike with the tools and resources for them to initiate autonomous actions. Mobilizing artists and fostering professional development, the Confederacy will encourage similar initiatives to develop through its support network, creating new avenues of cooperation with like-minded organisations and professionals that will expand the reach and scope of rural arts across Europe.