Creative Agency in Athens
From 7 to 9 October 2026, we joined BAUTOPIA 7, the annual gathering of the European Creative Hubs Network (ECHN), hosted by BIOS in Athens. Three intense days of talks, workshops, exhibitions and encounters with creative hubs, cultural organisations, makers and artists from across Europe.
This year's edition explored “Creative Agency: Sustaining Culture & Creativity in the Age of Intelligence”, opening conversations about how creative communities can develop the knowledge, tools and relationships to shape their own futures.
For FarmLab, it was an opportunity to share some of our work from rural Austria, experiment together with other makers, and reconnect with a network that has been an important part of our journey.
A year of making
Our contribution to the conference programme was a talk titled “A Year of Making: Materials, Seasons and Shared Knowledge.”
Through a journey across the seasons at FarmLab, Silvia Brandi presented how our activities emerge from the materials, resources and opportunities available at different times of the year. From working with wool and natural dyes to experimenting with ceramics, digital fabrication and locally available materials, the presentation explored what creative agency can mean in a rural context.
For us, rural creative agency is closely connected to the ability to recognise the possibilities of a place at a particular moment, and to bring together traditional and contemporary knowledge to make something of them.
The Open Loom Lab
Together with Olivia Kotsifa from SYN Fab Lab (Greece), we hosted The Open Loom Lab: Reviving Craft Through Digital Fabrication, a hands-on workshop exploring how traditional textile practices and digital technologies can work together.
Starting from the challenges surrounding locally produced European wool, participants experimented with natural dyeing and weaving, using digitally fabricated tools such as laser-cut looms and 3D-printed needles.
The workshop brought together people with different backgrounds and levels of experience, sharing techniques and experimenting with ways to make wool processing and textile crafts more accessible.
Utopias Applied
FarmLab also participated in Utopias Applied, the exhibition accompanying BAUTOPIA 7, where we presented Offcut Couture, a garment exploring the creative possibilities of textile leftovers.
The exhibition brought together projects from different creative hubs, offering a glimpse into the materials, technologies and approaches being developed across the network.
Three days of encounters
Beyond our contributions to the programme, BAUTOPIA was an opportunity to meet people working in very different contexts, exchange experiences, discover projects and discuss possible collaborations.
One of the highlights was the launch of the Creative Hubs Atlas, a new resource mapping creative hubs and their activities, making it easier to discover and connect with initiatives across Europe and beyond.
A big thank you to the European Creative Hubs Network and BIOS for organising such a rich event, and for the work they do throughout the year to keep this community connected.
We came back from Athens with new contacts, ideas and conversations to continue. Looking forward to what comes next!
