Published by O Castro Art Village · Ribeira Sacra, Galicia, Spain
Rural Coliving for Creatives: Why Who You Work With Matters as Much as Where You Work
There is a question worth asking before you book your next coliving stay: what kind of people will you be sharing a table with?
The environment you work in is not neutral. Neither is the company.
Who O Castro is actually for
O Castro Art Village is not exclusively for artists in the traditional sense. A coder working on a product they care about is a creative. A researcher following an obsession is a creative. A strategist who approaches their work with imagination and intention is a creative. The definition of art we apply here is broad: if you work with your mind and your curiosity, and you are open to the idea that inspiration does not only come from inside your own discipline, you will find your place here.
What that means in practice is that people arrive from many different fields. What they share is an appetite for an environment that takes creativity seriously; not as a hobby or a soft skill, but as a way of approaching everything.
Scenius: Brian Eno’s idea that explains what coliving can be at its best
The musician and producer Brian Eno coined the term “Scenius” to describe something individual genius cannot account for: the collective intelligence that emerges when creative people share the same place, the same timeframe, and the same preoccupations. The great artistic movements in history were not produced by isolated individuals. They were produced by communities; people who ate together, argued together, and pushed each other’s thinking without always meaning to.
We have seen this happen at O Castro. A filmmaker’s conversation at dinner plants something in a writer’s mind that surfaces three days later as the turn their chapter needed. A coder, surrounded by people rethinking form and structure in their own disciplines, returns to their project with a different set of questions. This is not mystical. It is what happens when you stop working in isolation and start working in proximity to people who take their work seriously.
A standard coliving space gives you a desk and a community of professionals. A coliving space built around creative identity gives you something harder to find: a Scenius.
The balance between solitude and community
What surprises almost every resident at O Castro — beyond the landscape — is how carefully the balance between individual and communal life is maintained.
Too much communal life and the noise begins to crowd out the work. Too much solitude and the energy that comes from shared creative life goes missing. We think about this balance deliberately. If you need silence and privacy, you have it. If you want to disappear into your project for three days and surface only for meals, nobody will question it. But when you reappear, there is a community to return to; and your absence will never be judged, nor will your presence be taken for granted.
This is different from a rural coliving space organised around hustle and socialising. Artists, and anyone who works creatively, need an environment that understands their eccentricities, respects their preoccupations, and does not ask them to perform sociability on a schedule.
The bigger idea: creativity as a force for change
For us, putting creatives together in one place is not only about the quality of individual work. It is about what happens when people who are already disposed to rethink norms and limits start doing so in each other’s company. Networks form. Collaborations begin. Ideas that would have stayed private become shared projects.
We believe that creative communities, given the right conditions, have the capacity to produce real social and cultural change. O Castro is built on that belief.
O Castro Art Village is a rural creative coliving and residency in Ribeira Sacra, Galicia, and home to the KinoTerra Cinema Lab, led by filmmaker Davoud Gerami. Stays from a few days to several months. Find out more on our creative residency page.