Hello everyone,
In case you hadn’t already seen, I just wanted to make you aware of the first Radicle talk, taking place in May, which is being organised and hosted by Susanna Grant (writer and gardener who also runs the shade plant shop, Linda, in Hackney, East London).
I’m going to be in conversation with Carmen Sheridan and Natalie Warner (both gardeners and previous contributors to Radicle), discussing what it means to belong and how our experiences with gardening, plants, growing and the land has shaped our sense of belonging. What does it mean to belong in an age in which we are pushed toward separation, division, dislocation and sold a mindset of scarcity and domination? What does it mean (for us humans and our more-than-human kin) to be “native”? How do we belong to place? Who gets to belong to place? What have our experiences of gardening and connecting with the land taught us about what it means to belong? It will be an informal chat and there will be room for questions and discussion. This will be a chance for us to be in community with each other, in person, as we attempt to navigate what it means for us to belong and how we might find connection with the past, present, future, with our ancestors and ourselves, with each other and the earth, through the humble act of gardening and nurturing plants.
This talk comes against the backdrop of our respective articles published in Radicle, which shared a common thread of belonging running between them. You can read them here:
Home and Heritage: A Garden’s Story, by Natalie Warner
Tracing my roots, by Carmen Sheridan
If this talk is successful there may be other Radicle talks in the future. I already have an idea of some further topics I think it would be great to cover… If this is something you like the sound of or would like to see more of, I hope you’ll come and join us. And if you can’t make it this time but it sounds like the kind of thing you’d like to attend in future, please help support the event by sharing it on social media. The IG post is here:
Date: Sunday 15th May
Time: 11am-12:30pm (for an 11:30am start)
Venue: Shoreditch Design Rooms, 2-4 Scawfell Street, London E2 8NG
Tickets: £10 each via Eventbrite*
*A small number of free tickets are available for anyone with very limited funds. Please message me or Susanna directly if you would like one.
Whilst we’re here, I thought I’d also bring your attention to these upcoming events, which may be of interest. Most of them have been shared previously via @decolonisethegarden, but worth mentioning again in case you missed them:
Kinder in Colour, Peak District, Sunday 24th April
This Sunday there is going to be a BPOC led and centered walk on Kinder Scout in the Peak District to mark 90 years since the Kinder Scout trespass that spearheaded the development of the National Parks and the Right to Roam movement. It aims to address the barriers to rural spaces that exclude people of colour, celebrate the history of the Kinder trespass and create a new countryside culture that is welcoming to everyone.
IG Post here:
More about the event (which is worth reading, even if you can’t make it) here.
Rooted Beings, Wellcome Collection, London, 24 March 2022—29 August 2022
A free exhibition at the Wellcome Collection in London, ‘Rooted Beings’ invites us to embark on a meditative reflection on the world of plants and fungi. The exhibition considers what we might learn from plant behaviour, and the impacts of colonial expeditions on the exploitation of natural resources and indigenous knowledges.
https://wellcomecollection.org/exhibitions/YZeNOxEAACQAXM-0
Accompanying the exhibition is the anthology ‘This Book is a Plant’.
MADEYOULOOK | Ejaradini, Primary, Nottingham, April - September 2022
Ejaradini is an art installation and garden created by South African artist collaborative MADEYOULOOK (Molemo Moiloa and Nare Mokgotho). The exhibition features archival images, plants, and text on the façade of Primary (an artist-led contemporary visual arts organisation). Ejaradini reflects on Black urban gardening, land, and plant life in South Africa and Britain through visual and nature-based storytelling.
https://www.weareprimary.org/whats-on/ejaradini
Owen Griffiths: Thinking Green, Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, Swansea
Friday 8 April 2022 - Sunday 18 September 2022
Thinking Green is part exhibition, part research space, transforming the Atrium of Swansea Council’s Glynn Vivian Art Gallery into a community design studio as they embark on the redesign of the gallery’s garden. Owen Griffiths’ project imagines what a garden can be; a sanctuary for wellbeing, a space for creative learning, a haven for biodiversity. It considers the radical aspects of the garden, as a site to grow, model and harvest ideas of social change.
Find out more here:
https://www.glynnvivian.co.uk/whats-on/thinking-green-land-dialogues-community-and-owen-griffiths/
Rough Trade Books Birthday Party for the Garden Museum Series of pamphlets
Arnold Circus Bandstand, London E2
Wednesday 4th May, 6.30pm
A celebration of the first anniversary of the Garden Museum pamphlets, with each of the authors Susanna Grant, Claire Ratinon, Sam Ayre, Nat Mady and Zakiya McKenzie in conversation with Maya Thomas (The Modern Herbal).
Radical Landscapes, Tate Liverpool, 5 May - 4 September 2022
Tate Liverpool presents Radical Landscapes, a major exhibition showing a century of landscape art revealing a social and cultural history of Britain through the themes of trespass, land use and the climate emergency and presenting a radical view of the British landscape in art.
The exhibition will include over 150 works. Expanding on the traditional, picturesque portrayal of the landscape, Radical Landscapes will present art that reflects the diversity of Britain’s landscape and communities. From rural to radical, the exhibition reconsiders landscape art as a progressive genre, with artists drawing new meanings from the land to present it as a heartland for ideas of freedom, mysticism, experimentation and rebellion.
https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-liverpool/radical-landscapes
There is also an accompanying book available, for which I was invited to write a short piece: