Een bloeiend dorp - Heeten 2001
(Flowering Village)

The idea to literally shower the Salland village of Heeten with flowers started from the need to highlight village culture.

The Pony Week, the annual festival week in September, which was held for the fortieth time in 2001, was the prefect occasion. What is a more appropriate symbol than a village full of sunflowers? Festival weeks are an integral part of village culture. It is difficult to ascertain the role village festivals play in a village community and what effects they have, but at any rate, they increase social connections. The positive influence that a festival week has on a village community is so big it can be seen as a collective or public work of art.

The sunflower project is therefore also an ode to the power of village culture, which often receives too little attention. The sunflower project originated in the same way that the Pony Week did, through the efforts of the villagers themselves.

It thereby symbolizes the concepts of ‘silent community sense’ and ‘the inexpressibly natural’.

Despite the many questions and uncertainties about the initiative that were prevalent at the beginning of 2001, more than 200,000 sunflowers blossomed in Heeten in the autumn of that same year. With astonishing energy, the workgroup Helianthus took the initiative to work together with many volunteers. They took the right course of action at the right moment to make the project a success. Many inhabitants, streets, hamlets and schools, among others, developed their own initiatives with the sunflower as their theme. The whole project was recorded in an expressive publication. It has become a wonderful document of historical interest from and for the village.