Anthropologist and urban honey maker
Oliver Maxwell is the founder of the Copenhagen honey project Bybi, looking after beehives and working with businesses, arts and community organisations all over Copenhagen. Oliver is interested in how humans, plants and animals can live well together in our cities. The 5-6 tons of honey that Bybi’s bees gather from the city’s gardens and parks becomes part of magical, sensual encounters between bees, flowers and people. These encounters invite us to reinvent ourselves as citizens of a city, where both humans and non-humans thrive.
Oliver began as a monkey researcher in Madagascar and worked in community development and nature management in Vietnam, Cambodia and the UK before moving to Copenhagen in 2008. His work with Bybi has involved projects, installations, performances and teaching with locals and visitors of all ages and backgrounds.