Summary
The loss of biodiversity has remained persistent despite decades of biodiversity governance and conservation efforts. Like climate change, addressing biodiversity loss requires transformative changes across economic, political, and cultural aspects of society that challenge the status quo and address the root causes of intersecting socio-ecological crises. Planting Seeds for biodiverse and just rurban futures explores the knowledge infrastructures enabling such transformative changes towards biodiversity justice, at a local level. The project is co-curated by the rurban futures collective at the University of Twente in collaboration with two cultural organisations operating at the intersection of art, technology and ecology to promote digital literacy and creativity for regenerative futures: Tetem in Twente and Creative Coding Utrecht (CCU).
By re-imagining and prototyping ‘libraries’ for biodiversity justice, the project aims to reclaim biodiversity as part of everyday life and embed biodiversity knowledge and stewardship in the knowledge and practices of local communities. Informal public spaces such as libraries and cultural organisations can function as ‘democratic infrastructures’, connecting everyday knowledge and experiences with societal transformation. Both Tetem and CCU have recently become a Zoöp – a governance model to cooperate between human and nonhuman forms of life (zoë). In parallel co-creative processes supported by artists in Enschede and Utrecht, we explore how biodiversity libraries could function as knowledge infrastructures for commoning biodiversity justice, linking local contexts with broader cultural and political transformation.
The RUrban Futures Collective is a transdisciplinary collective of researchers at the University of Twente who explore the conditions for just, biodiverse and democratic futures by addressing the interactions between rural and urban spaces, practices and imaginaries. Using collaborative, engaged and arts based methods, they seek to democratise debate about biodiversity, climate, and futures.
Partners
Planting Seeds is funded through the Dutch Research agenda (NWA) green route: https://www.nwo.nl/en/projects/qykoc29316
Partners in this project: Tetem and Creative Coding Utrecht
Project duration: 1 September 2025 – 31 December 2027
