European Network of Cultural Centres (ENCC)

The Sky We Want

FarmLab.at
Austria
TS_09MAS_museo-prato_00121_EDIT01
The Sky We Want is a participatory project in which citizens and students collaboratively build a Museo Aero Solar balloon using reused plastic films, including hay bale wrapping commonly used in the region. Through workshops, participants assemble the membrane and inscribe messages for peace and ecological responsibility, while reflecting on plastic waste and our relationship with the atmosphere. The project culminates in a public solar launch where the balloon lifts these voices into the sky, symbolically reclaiming the sky as a shared civic space.
The project develops a participatory artistic process culminating in the public launch of a solar balloon, following the “Museo Aero Solar” methodology developed within the Aerocene initiative. Participants collect recycled plastic bags from everyday life and agriculture, including hay bale wrapping typical of the local rural landscape. During workshops, citizens, students and residents clean, cut and assemble these materials into the large membrane required for the balloon. As the structure grows, participants are invited to draw or write messages responding to the theme “The sky we want”. The sculpture becomes a collective surface carrying reflections on peace, ecological responsibility and shared futures. The project culminates in a public launch where the tethered balloon rises using only solar energy and the natural thermodynamics of the air. In a time when airspace is often associated with pollution, surveillance or war, the flight symbolically reclaims the atmosphere as a peaceful civic commons. The workshops and launch will be documented through photography and video to share the process and inspire other communities to experiment with collective, fossil-free flight.

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