The economy starts at home. Not on the trading floor, but in the kitchen, in the garden, and in the home office. The new exhibition by UniKasselTransfer’s SDG+ Lab, “Managing Households + Sticking Together—A Different Approach to the Economy,” asks: What can everyday economic life look like when it’s focused on responsibility, care, and circularity?
At the exhibition opening on July 1, 2026, starting at 6:00 p.m. (doors open at 5:30 p.m.) at UNI:Lokal, visitors will roll up their sleeves and, together with a master mason, lay the foundation for a household of the future: renewable, climate-friendly, and community-oriented.
In a walk-through model house, visitors will explore how the economy changes when we use materials such as compost, wood, or straw not as waste but as resources for the future. They’ll see how repair, maintenance, and collective action create new forms of value and foster circular systems.
Originally, the organization of daily life—rather than the market—was at the heart of the economy. Derived from the Greek word “oikos,” the term “economy” describes the home and the shared living space. Exemplary scenes from everyday life illustrate what life in such a household might look like and summarize the work of the SDG+ Lab during the thematic year “Transformations in Work and the Economy”—from food cycles and composting to repair, and from reused to bio-based materials.
The exhibition shows that economic transformation begins where people use, care for, and share resources—and think in terms of cycles. This gives rise to a different understanding of the economy: one focused on preservation, care, and shared responsibility. An economy that holds us together.
