ReGenerativa Auftaktveranstaltung 2025

Future Platform ReGenerativa

2025 | Kickoff Event

In November 2025, the kick-off event for the ReGenerativa future platform took place at the KinderKunstLabor. Together with artists, experts and children, initial approaches to regenerative thinking and action were explored, laying the foundation for a long-term collaboration.

Starting Point and Objectives
The kick-off event piloted a format that understands regeneration as a cultural, perceptual and imaginative task. At its heart was the question of how children – together with artists, art educators and accompanying adults – can use artistic practice to engage with topics such as sustainability, cycles, nature, materials and future viability.

The event was aimed at school classes and families as well as professionals and stakeholders. Its objective was to draw inspiration from artistic and hands-on processes while creating an experimental setting that could serve as a prototype for longer-term formats within ReGenerativa.

Format and Programme
In their opening remarks, Christoph Thun-Hohenstein, Artistic Director of ReGenerativa; Mona Jas, Artistic Director of the KinderKunstLabor; and Hermann Dikowitsch, Head of the Department of Arts and Culture at the Office of the Lower Austrian State Government, representing Governor Johanna Mikl-Leitner, outlined the significance of the collaboration between ReGenerativa and the KinderKunstLabor, both in terms of its content and its institutional scope. At the same time, they set out the programmatic framework for the kick-off workshops focusing on cycles, forests, water, textiles, as well as animals and other species.

At the heart of the event were five open workshops conceived by artists and designers and carried out together with the children. In the morning, school classes took part in the workshops; in the afternoon, they were opened to families. Two thematic contributions by artist Veronika Dirnhofer and Michael Stavaric framed the day. The programme was complemented by a joint “Feed Forward” session, which brought together initial observations and perspectives.

The workshops were deliberately not organised as didactic stations, but as open-ended artistic experiments. In this way, they became spaces for exploration, creative practice and collective reflection.

Weitere Details zu den Werkstätten

Cycles (Ronja Grossar)
What are biological, technical, and hybrid cycles—and what role do they play in regeneration and sustainability? In Ronja Grossar’s workshop, children explored materials such as corn cobs, slag stone, tree fungi, mycelium panels, and PLA filament. Acting as “thinking partners,” the objects encouraged them to touch, compare, draw, and speculate: How is corn turned into plastic? What is slag? How are natural and industrial materials connected? How are natural and industrial materials connected? The workshop demonstrated how intuitively children can grasp circular processes through sensory and hands-on experiences.

Forest / dream.lab (Andreas Hoffer)
Taking inspiration from the Yanomami myth Mari hi—The Tree of Dreams and Rivane Neuenschwander’s exhibition dream.lab, the young participants worked together to create a large-scale tree. Using charcoal, graphite, and pencil, they produced a collective drawing complemented by personal wishes and hopes, such as “cities full of trees.” The workshop provided a safe space in which fears and biographical experiences could also be expressed. Art thus became a medium for community, self-expression, and engagement with the realities of the participants’ own lives.
Water (Herwig Turk)
Using photographs, maps, and videos, Herwig Turk introduced the children to the topic of rivers. Many of the participants came from Tulln and had a direct connection to the Danube. Using branches, leaves, bark, wool, and bio-based glue, they created boats, messages, and miniature landscapes. The children translated their knowledge of water and habitats into creations of their own. Their works became tools for thinking about ecological interconnections and their personal relationship with the landscape.
Textiles (Karin Oèbster)
The textile workshop combined questions about fashion, fast fashion, and production with hands-on creative work. Using fabrics, ribbons, wool, and sewing machines, participants were able to design and make their own tops. Documentaries and material guides also provided information about fibres and their origins. Differences between age groups became apparent: while the older children initially worked more cautiously and took greater cues from one another, the younger participants engaged with the materials openly and playfully. The creative process made social conditioning tangible while also opening up space for independent ideas.
Animals, Plants, Fungi (Kay Walkowiak)
What can humans learn about regeneration from other living beings? Starting from this question, the children developed shelters, hybrid creatures, and speculative life forms. Using textured papers, cardboard, branches, and string, they created beaver lodges, wearable shelters, flying animals, and more. Through play, the children explored coexistence, habitats, and mutual dependencies—and experimented with possible futures.
Overarching Insights
The workshops demonstrated that children are capable of engaging with complex questions concerning sustainability, cycles, and the future in nuanced ways when these subjects can be experienced through the senses, the body, and practical activity. Knowledge emerged through observing, creating, comparing, failing, trying again, and storytelling. The adults accompanied these processes as co-learners. Knowledge was therefore not conveyed in a one-sided manner but produced collaboratively and in response to each situation.
ReGenerativa—Aesthetic Futures Research
The opening event of ReGenerativa approached artistic practice as a form of research. Materials, imagination, the body, and social experience came together in open-ended experimental settings. The children and young people were not merely a target audience but co-researchers. Their works made regeneration tangible as an open question and a shared process of exploration. This created an experimental space in which art, research, education, and the collective capacity to imagine society’s future converged.
We would like to thank DDr. Christoph Thun-Hohenstein, Artistic Director of the ReGenerativa cultural platform, his team, and all the children, young people, artists, and cultural practitioners involved. We look forward to continuing and deepening this work in 2026.