MODERNGROUND

Modernground can’t be packaged into one neat little offering. Its founder, Rachael Barraclough, has created a brand that plays to her two key strengths: her ability to make spaces beautiful, and her love of bringing people together in festive musical soirees.

 Residencies

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Now more than ever, technology is allowing us to work from home, and especially since covid, we are exploring how to live our lives slightly differently. With employers being far more flexible with ‘home-working’ many people are seeking new ways to live and spend time together.

These new lifestyle preferences correspond to those Modernground has already been promoting through its multi-generational salons and workshops in London. Modernground builds on these shifts in attitudes by offering weeklong and longer 1-3 month residencies in charming and elegant old buildings; stunning locations chosen especially for their sense of homeliness and beauty. Residencies are held in the British countryside, and also in Italy, which is culturally renowned as retaining many of the qualities that create a good life – good food, a local bar where everyone knows each other and communal harvesting of produce.

Most retreats today offer an escape to help oneself, focusing on the individual (‘self-help, self-realisation’, self-worth, selfies). Whilst these serve a purpose, the Modernground residencies are very different: they emphasise opportunities to learn, be more expansive and to celebrate the life we have. They also help people feel connected with each other, encouraging intergenerational conversation. A resident could spend time chatting to their neighbour whilst etching or painting; enjoying the outdoors whilst gathering olives or picking vegetables from the orto; learning about mushrooms from the young biologist Merlin Sheldrake whilst sewing; discovering ancient Rome through the brilliant art historian Caroline Vincenti whilst wandering around churches; laying and styling the table for dinner, or singing along to the piano in the music room.

Arrive at a Modernground Residency with an open mind ready to learn all sorts of new skills in craft, cooking, art, music and gardening, and open ears to listen to stories and lectures by original thinkers and doers.  Each residency will also have a coaching element with exercises to help you in achieving new goals. With large doses of fun, empathy and spontaneity, Modernground residencies allow ample opportunities for magic to happen.