The economy starts at home. Not on the trading floor, but in the kitchen, in the garden, in the home office. The new exhibition by UniKasselTransfer’s SDG+ Lab, “Managing Households + Sticking Together – A Different Way of Living the Economy,” asks: What can everyday economic activity look like when it’s guided by responsibility, care, and cycles?
In a walk-through model house, visitors explore how the economy changes when we use materials like compost, wood, or straw not as waste, but as resources for the future. How repair, care, and collective action create new forms of value creation and give rise to circular systems.
Originally, the organization of daily life—rather than the market—was at the center 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 to composting and repair, all the way to reused and 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.
Feel free to join our regular guided tours on Wednesdays from 5:00 to 5:30 p.m., or schedule a tour at another time by emailing sdgpluslab@uni-kassel.de.
