About

About me, my work, and this website

With this website I give an overview of my work and show its interconnectedness. Summarized, I do the following types of projects.

1. Edible Natural Spaces

I participate in bringing together and organizing communities around edible natural spaces. I don’t do this alone. I work together with fellow soul-rebels in the organization GroenGoed! in the city of Rotterdam. And I am just starting a new second project ‘De Moerderij’ with my accomplice Daniel Opbroek.

2. Social Movements

I participate in bringing together and organizing initiatives and organisations in social movements. These, in my view, have the main function as extra-political bodies. My main work at this moment is focused on Vereniging Groen010 in Rotterdam. I also support de RAB (Rotterdamse ArmoedebestrijdingsBeweging).

3. Writing

I write. At least I wrote some ten years ago quite virociously. I stopped for a while. In first instance that was because I thought I had written all I had to say. But then I moved through a radical change of vision, even a radical spiritual change. I used to write critically about our economic system from a (Christian/Hindu/Buddhist) spirituality of love. You can say that I went through a spiritual revolution in which I recovered my early adolescent magic (or nature-) spirituality. I left behind my previous mantra that spirituality = love = changing yourself and your actions. I found that spirituality = magic = changing the world. This goes completely against the grain of many ‘world-religions’ as well as against ‘new’ spiritual movements. And it has also completely changed my life and my analysis of economic structures. It is time to start writing again. So on this website you will frequently find some new blogs and articles concerning spirituality, nature, economics and liberation.

Spirituality = magic = changing the world.

Daily Life

My daily life is interconnected with my work. In fact, there are no true boundaries between my daily life and my work. I try to live up to my spiritual and societal values. I am a proud father of my three kids, doing my best to raise them as well as I can in a dynamic family life recovering from divorce. I am wildly in love with my new love. I see myself as a disciplined sportsman and fiercely enjoy adventure. My hands are daily covered with earth from my own garden, or from one of my garden projects. And as a side-hustle you can find me climbing a tree to prune her or just to enjoy listening to the giant spirit of the tree singing her song with the wind.

One life

Working for my garden-projects I do not regularly speak of my magical analysis of capitalism. Uniting initiatives in social movements I even often put my own views aside, in order to be able to voice our common voice, not my own. But in essence all my work is highly connected. This website not only functions to give an overview of my work. It also shows its interconnectedness.

Rutger Henneman is a social entrepreneur in urban farming,writer and mover in social movements.

He studied International Development Studies at Wageningen University with a minor in Moral Philosophy. In 2009 he finished a research project on the spiritual and religious roots of Scotland’s modern land reform, in coöperation with Scottish poet, writer and activist Alastair McIntosh.

Now, living in Rotterdam (the Netherlands) Rutger Henneman is project manager for GroenGoed in several community gardens like Tuin op Hofbogen, Wilgenplantsoen, Vredestuin en Bloklandtuin. And he is active in several coöperative organizations like Groen010 and RAB.