The ancient rite of "Funkenfeuer" was traditionally held around Easter in communities, where people believed it ensured good crop yields and community well-being. Children would collect wood and the largest piles were rewarded. Over time, rural depopulation, modernization, and the loss of traditions have socially excluded and isolated elderly residents. Revitalizing this fire ritual could help empower aging rural populations by reconnecting them to community memories and enabling self-empowerment through participation.

1. the rite
The rite „Funkenfeuer“ (literally „spark“ and „fire“) is an ancient rite reaching back to the me-
diaeval ages.
It is a fire rite held yearly in the time around easter. People believed, that the well-being of
the community (e.g. crop yield) was depending on the success of the rite.
In former times for example children (the generation of our grandparents) got one day off
from school to find as much wood as possible. The biggest amount was rewarded
with another day off from school. All in all the yearly efforts to get the fire as
huge as possible were embedded in a complex setting of various
community processes.

2. qualities
What is interesting to us, are the inclusive effects of this rite.
As the activities were related to the entire village
community, they might have had a strong
approach on:
• inclusion
• neighbourhood bonding
• local-identity.

3. i s e s u
What especially concerns the generation of our grandparents is the ongoing loss of traditions
and rites like the “Funkenfeuer”.
This kind of loss (of traditions, intergenerational collective memory, and neigh-
bourhood-identity) is also an expression for social exclusion of elder-
ly people enhaced by modernization and economization. These
processes are accompanied by processes of anonymization.
The exodus to the city effects the overaging of rural
regions the degeneration of infrastructures and the
erodation of social community structures.
What stays are old people more or less left alone in
reverse-engineered villages. The former
experienced and lived community
bonding rites have become to
individualized memories.

4. d e s i r e
The task is to find a tool that empowers the aged people in rural regions to self-empower,
participate and co-create in social society. The rite “Funkenfeuer” should be used an a (pos-
sible) anchor point to revitalize their knowledges and memories and make use of it.
Within that general frameset we would like you to think if there could be any tool that makes
it easier for aged people to involve themselves or that empowers themselves compensating
bodily evoked barriers to redesign this rite, and what they associate with it. For example may-
be some kind of an adapted fireplace could be a helpful tool to rethink the setting for the
rite, but this does not necessarily have to be the product.