Hägendorf 2100

Around 250 children imagined their village in the year 2100 — and painted their utopia together on the wall of their school.

In workshops with all thirteen classes from grade 3 to grade 6 of Hägendorf primary school, the children explored nature and farmland, mobility, housing, work, education and technology — in the classroom and on walks through the village — and asked one question: how could Hägendorf become fairer, more sustainable and better to live in?

Their drawings, texts and visions were merged into one shared design and realised as a 6 × 8 m mural in the school building. To make co-authorship real, the mural was painted on a paint-by-numbers principle — every child visibly contributed to the whole.

Hägendorf 2100 brings together artistic practice, cultural education and civic participation. It strengthens self-efficacy, belonging and confidence in the future — and makes visible that children are not only part of the future, they actively shape it. Developed as a pilot, the format is designed to travel to further schools as a transferable model for collaborative, utopian art in public space.

In anonymous feedback, 89% of the 147 pupils who responded rated the workshops 4 or 5 out of 5, and 87% of those who answered after painting said they were proud or very proud of the mural. All 13 teachers rated the project’s fit with school life and its leadership as good or very good. Asked why they were proud, one child wrote: “Because we children are the future.”