Rural School of Economics

The motto of the Rural School of Economics (RSoE) is knowledge-made-by-many and trans-local learning. Knowledge is held by non-humans and humans and is in our hands, in our heads, in our hearts and between us.

RSoE is initiated by Myvillages, an international collective based within a European geography, founded in 2003 by artists Kathrin Böhm (UK/DE), Wapke Feenstra (NL) and Antje Schiffers (DE).

The website is structured through multiple timelines and milestones. These document the participants and lessons of each place.

Art historian and Wikimedian Sandra Fauconnier has been working with Myvillages on publishing to the digital commons, including their own Wikipedia entry. Images for the site are published under a CC BY-SA 2.0 Creative Commons license on Flickr, which allows images to be shared further – including Wikipedia – and reach an audience beyond the project website. These images are pulled into the site database via the Flickr API.

Pages are modular and use variables – colours, backgrounds, gradients – to allow RSoE constituents to edit the design. Visitors to the website can opt-out of these customisations with a simple light mode.

The website uses English as the main language. Texts throughout the site can be translated into Belarusian, Dutch, Frisian, German, Italian and Russian.