The first 100 days of the anthrozoological vasculum out in the wild
Taking stock
Just two things:
a reminder of what an anthrozoological vasculum is;
an overview of the activities and ideas it has generated in its first 100 days.
A vasculum is a type of container that 19th century naturalists regularly took with them into the field to collect plant specimens without having to press them on site. It was such an ordinary piece of equipment that Darwin didn’t even think to mention the one he took with him on his voyage on the Beagle — and still, we have good reason to assume that the one below really did belong to him, as Glenn Benson explains.
Now, an anthrozoological vasculum is something rather extraordinary! At present, only one exists worldwide, and it is at the heart of the global philosophy and poetry project Philosophy in the Wild. Finding Hope in Mixed Communities, coming out of the (Women) In Parenthesis network. The original idea had been:
to turn Mary Midgley’s iconic biscuit tin, which she used to offer biscuits and wisdom during philosophical conversations, into a container to collect proofs that humans can live in non-exploitative ways with wild living animals. The biscuit tin was to travel the globe and aid in the exploration and documentation of mutualistic, reparative and futuristic human-animal-relations.
Here is what happened.
Just under two weeks before the project launch, Clare, one of the inheritors of the biscuit tin, broke the news that the tin was not allowed to travel the world again. Because of the success of the first round of the Notes from a Biscuit Tin project, it is now considered an item of cultural significance and kept in the Midgley archive at Durham University. Special training is needed to be allowed to handle it. Clearly, with over two dozen people worldwide willing to host events for the second round of NFBT, quick action was needed.
Thankfully, Rachael, the other inheritor of the original tin, found a beautiful vintage vasculum online — and so the idea was born not to turn the biscuit tin into an anthrozoological vasculum but to have an actual vasculum represent the biscuit tin.
Meanwhile, most teams had already received their welcome kits that contained mini tins for the production of multispecies poetry, which is the one outcome that is going to be consistent across all sites. They were sent independently from the vasculum because many of the local activities started and/or continue at times when the vasculum could not, or cannot, be with the teams. Also, these tins are designed to extract site-specific scents to go along with written poetry, and we couldn’t take the risk to lose them on a global voyage. The resulting multispecies poems will be exhibited at the end of the project, some time in the second quarter of 2026.
Since we released our anthrozoological vasculum into the wild, it has been 100 days. Above and beyond representing Midgley’s biscuit tin, it carries little notebooks, one for each site, for people to note anything they deem important related to their activities — drawings, data, thoughts, stories, quotes — and to probe the very meaning of ‘wild’. Below, I summarise the many cool events and important questions its journey has inspired.
April 2025
The vasculum travels with Beth MacIntosh to Wales where it stays for two of five events. The overarching theme is listening, and the teams encourage young people to play with creative and futuristic techniques of listening to other animals and with what they may have understood — no small feat at a time in which humans increasingly struggle to stay calm and listen to each other! And a fascinating scientific topic. At the same time, Alina Rusu and her team take their Masters students on a first field trip to one of the sites that work on the reintroduction of European bison to Romania. Widely regarded as a success, this story reminds me of potential tensions between animal and environmental ethics. Another question is what culture humans will need in order for them to behave well in rewilded areas. Meanwhile, Devon Fredericksen is settling in at her site in Norway, where she is going to spend three months to research the mutualism between eider ducks and eider keepers on the Vega Archipelago and to work on a book on it. The ducks face many challenges, also from other animals, and so that site also reminds me of the debates around compassionate conservation. In the background, I am liaising with the other teams and briefly scratch my head why we didn't get more funding: Is the project too wildlifey, not abolitionist enough, does multispecies poetry come across as instrumentalist? Or was the budget just crap? But then I focus on building this Substack as a platform to share the project and its idea as widely as I can nonetheless.
May 2025
Devon won’t have regular access to postal services in those remote regions just under the Arctic circle. So as to not hold up the vasculum’s journey Beth sends her only the content that was meant for her and sends the vasculum itself to France, to be with Samia. Beth goes on to give a talk related to the project, on how philosophers have traditionally viewed animals and nature — and how these ideas are being radically reshaped. Team Austria gets started with learning from and helping out at the Austrian bat station. Konstantin’s team is growing and so are their ideas. Meanwhile, the project as a whole wins the support of one more curious and generous mind, Michelle Strauss, who will share her expertise on all things animal rights, rights of nature, and MOTH (more-than-human) conceptions of normativity with us. The project is mentioned in a Roving Philosophical Report at the start of a lovely long interview with Clare on Mary Midgley. A few more welcome kits reach their destinations, others are sadly lost. Yet the first multispecies poem manages to reach me back in London, from Romania. I go to the Netherlands to talk about both co-creating art with other animals in general and our project specifically, and I finally manage to sign up to the smell club, a wonderful initiative by Frank Bloom from whom I have learnt a lot. I keep thinking about the site in Brasil. The real fishing season has started, and the artist who is on Beatriz’s and Caetano’s normal research project, Matheus Montanari, gives a thought-provoking talk, here. Towards the end of the month, Team Romania organises a week of workshops and events in Cluj-Napoca — among the many cool things they create, they also craft a portable bison that facilitates playful interaction and learning.
June 2026
Greg McElwain publishes a helpful blogpost on Midgley. Greg is part of one the US-based teams and we keep talking about how to pull off the event as planned. The impact of the Trump administration is noticeable here as well, though the human-wolf-relation was controversial before that. I have more poetry in the post, from Wales. Samia — remember, currently hosting the vasculum — brings her students to explore a Natura 2000 site, La Petite Ferme d’Emeraud. This site makes me wonder what it takes for an animal, humans included, to lead a wild life. I feel the project as a whole is quite successful at deconstructing simplistic notions of ‘wild’ and ‘wilderness’. I am grateful to everybody sharing their perspectives and adding to what sometimes feels like proper creative chaos, spread across geographies, species, languages and cultures. Another destination where we can’t send the vasculum by post is India, but Sindhoor Panghal gives an insightful interview. The vasculum travels on from France to The Netherlands for its yet briefest stay. One theme that keeps coming back, in my own work and in engaging with the work of others, is the question of genre, perhaps even media. Another is how to encourage meaningful philosophical conversations. I realise hardly anybody has commented on this Substack thus far. Still, the project topics of human-wild-animal-relations and of community are timely. Team Austria is growing even further and keeps exploring questions around anthropomorphism and hope. Team Ireland decides to form a collective. Team Romania rolls up their sleeves again — and their portable bison — and they carry out two more activities: a field trip to Ținutul Zimbrului, the oldest bison reserve in Romania, and a learning cafe on dialogues with nature. And yet another poem reaches me, from Norway.
July 2025
The vasculum is now on its way from The Netherlands to Romania. In the UK, one heat wave seems to hunt the next and it takes me longer than I had hoped to appreciate the poetry Devon sent. It is lovely, as are the others, and I can’t wait to display them all together. I keep encountering more relations that I would love to see covered. From reparations on behalf of beavers in Ealing to a tradition of looking after swans in Hamburg I would have classified as “futuristic”, were it not to originate in the 17th century. Moral, epistemological and aesthetic questions around the representation of other animals, political or not, keep coming up. Linguistic ones as well — what do we mean when we look for harmony “in nature”, how far can we stretch the notion of ‘democracy’? How can we become both more creative and more robust at times when harmony is rare, democracies are at risk, and our language is increasingly twisted and used against ourselves? A talk I give on how solidarity with wild animals connects with this project reminds me that true conversations happen face-to-face — or nose-to-bum or whichever corporeal modality works for you. I also say that humans are my favourite animals. Or, that I wish I could say that. As I said, it is getting really hot these days. But Midgley was keen to stress that humans need other humans, too — and not despite but because they are animals. Today, more than ever, I realise that there will be no morally improved mixed communities if humans do not find peace with each other. Good news: The humans with whom I have the opportunity and pleasure to collaborate for this project make that wish come already a bit more true.
And so — the journey continues. Do come along. You can find out more about local events for each site on the website under “Programme”, pictures for past events under “Gallery”, you can revisit the Substack posts I have linked above, and there are also updates on Instagram and Bluesky. If you have any question or comment on any of this, please feel free to leave a comment below.