a place to call
HOME
In the autumn of 2020, after two years of searching, we were delighted to share the news that we had found the site on which to make the next stage of this school a reality.
In December 2020, we took ownership of two buildings and a patch of land in the small town of Östervåla, thirty miles northwest of Uppsala. Built in 1911 for the town shoemaker, the property has been in the same family for three generations.
Now it is our turn to make this a pocket of hospitality: a school that starts from the conversations we bring together around our kitchen table, that welcomes guests from near and far, and that serves as a gathering point for those who are drawn to the work of regrowing a living culture.
On this page, you can see how the property looked when we arrived – and what we saw in it.
The Yellow House
The ground floor of Åbyvägen 12 served as Lundqvist’s shoe shop until five years ago. The flat above the shop will be our family home.
The Shoe Shop
This will become the school’s first teaching room and a space where we can hold gatherings of many shapes and kinds.
The Red House
Built in 1924, this has served as living quarters, laundry and barn. With a bit of work, it will become a schoolhouse with accommodation and teaching space.
The Great Hall
In time, the upper floor of the Red House will become our school hall: a place for gatherings, talks, concerts and workshops. The antlers come with the property, as do many other reminders of the first three generations of its habitation. The early stages of our work here will involve a kind of archaeology.
The autumn of 2020 was a strange moment to share good news, and we felt a sense of shyness doing so, aware of how much bad news there was in the wider world. That much doesn’t change as the years go by.
Yet there was something else about this timing: in the middle of the pandemic, here was an act of faith that a time was coming when it would be easier to cross borders and gather around tables once again. When that time came, many kinds of gathering space would be needed, and our work has been to make this one of them.