Lilla Björka

An ecofeminist history – workshop at Elin Wägner’s Lilla Björka

In November 2021, (Re-)learning the Archive, with support from IASPIS, met seven design practitioners from different places in Sweden and the world. Inspired by the journalist, writer and activist Elin Wägner’s work, we reflected on possible sustainable futures. Below is the invitation that was sent out to the participants.

You are cordially invited to a three day online/onsite workshop in November 15-17^th of November, 2021, at Lilla Björka in Småland, Sweden. It is a workshop that is staged within the framework of the project (Re-)learning the Archive, a three-year project aiming at re-learning design through formulating other histories and from here find seeds for possible sustainable futures. (Re-)learning the Archive argues the importance of place in understanding design, for specific knowledges and agency of local cultures. The county Småland in the south of Sweden is the place of (Re-)learning the Archive. Here we re-learn in collaboration with various places, with young and old with different interests and backgrounds.  The specific site for this workshop is the house Lilla Björka located in the small village of Berg in the center of Småland. This house was built by the author, journalist and activist Elin Wägner in the 1920’s. From here she continued her activist work on women’s rights and pacifism that had previously mostly taken place in urban settings, but was also broadened by intersecting with an engagement with the rights of nature. She had a particularly keen eye to worms and trees. Wägner integrated observations of industrialisation, patriarchy and militarization through efficiency-seeking agriculture and turned to one of her creative expressions of imagining otherwise through writing fiction. She drew long temporal and geographical lines as she connected with myths and histories in her speculations on how good life could be lived for humans and other species.