A new arts project pairs photographers and poets with farmers, fishers and food growers to tell powerful stories of regeneration. These grassroots efforts offer hope – and a blueprint for a more sustainable future
Worm charmers, carbon capturers, wildflower whisperers, insect allies: regenerative farmers and fishers are working with nature, up and down the UK, in a time-honoured team.
Now, the We Feed The UK arts project and an accompanying book profile 10 of those that are leading the way, from Black-led growing projects in London to a majority-women workers cooperative in Edinburgh.
Rowan Phillimore and Ally Nelson from The Gaia Foundation, the charity which is behind the project along with more than 40 collaborators, refer in their introduction to the book to Nobel prize-winning chemist Ilya Prigogine.
“He said that ‘when a complex system is far from equilibrium, small islands of coherence in a sea of chaos have the capacity to shift the entire system to a higher order,’ they wrote.“The stories in this book are such ‘islands of coherence’”.
Sankofa
Series photographed by Arpita Shah
In north London, two growing projects are tending to injustices in the food system. Sandra Salazar D’eca founded Go Grow With Love in Tottenham and Enfield, to support women of African and Caribbean heritage in nurturing a reciprocal relationship with local land.
In Haringey, Paulette Henry, Pamela Shor and their team run Black Rootz. The UK’s first multigenerational, Black-led growing enterprise is reconnecting Londoners with seed, ancestral knowledge and earth. This cultivates more than crops. Together they are growing grassroots solutions for racial equality, land reparations and food justice.
“We call it agroecology. We call it permaculture. But these lessons have been passed down and we’re just trying to keep them alive,” says Shor, from Black Rootz (pictured above). “Our ancestors taught us to protect the land, and we all have a duty to future generations to live in balance with nature. Being able to connect food with communities allows them to understand heritage, allows them to understand power; it allows us to share.”
A Fish Called Julie
Series photographed by Jon Tonks
“Oceans have nourished us for thousands of years, but the bounties of our blue planet are ebbing,” writes photographer Jon Tonks. He focused his lens on the fisherfolk who are trying to work with, not against, waters off Cornwall and the Scilly Isles. Pictured on Scilly are Jof and son, Inigo, holding up handmade withy (willow) pots.
“Being a small-scale fisher offers a few metaphors for life,” Tonks continues. “When the weather tells you not to fish, listen. Allow the seas to replenish. Sustainable fishing means something different to everyone, but real sustainability teaches us not to be greedy, to give nature a chance, and leave enough for the next generation.
There is an understanding in these parts, an atmosphere, of people who live by the sea. Knowing when to fish, but more importantly when not to.”
Cultivating Equality
Series photographed by Sophie Gerrard
Sons inherit Scottish farms in 85% of cases, yet over half of UK family farm workers are women. In Edinburgh, Lauriston Farm is run by a majority-women workers’ cooperative, whose members are restoring a 100-acre urban growing site.
“There’s a plot run by a group of over-50s who didn’t know each other before, and one further up who are all from Kenya,” says Lisa Houston from the project. “We have a Ukrainian group, a Polish group, a group from Hong Kong, from South Africa. We only have communal sheds so that allotment holders can grow these diverse crops, cook together and eat together. We’re creating an abundance of food, and saying to people: ‘You can eat it’. Simple as that.”
Intergenerational Custodians
Series photographed by Andy Pilsbury
Bannau Brycheiniog (the Brecon Beacons) is home to the UK’s largest intergenerational nature restoration project.
The Penpont Project’s custodians are a co-management council formed of 13 to 18-year-olds, tenant farmers, landowners and representatives from charity Action for Conservation. They make decisions by consensus, young people making bonds with older generations.
“It is incredible to witness how much fresh energy young people bring to a sector that desperately needs creativity,” says local farmer, ecologist and educator Forrest Hogg. “We live in a beautiful part of the world that needs nurturing back to life. But we all stand on the shoulders of our ancestors. “Yes, there is a story of degradation, but there is also a deeper story of connection and of love for the land.”
The Clean Blue of Linen
Series photographed by Yvette Monahan
Irish fax has been turned into linen for 2,000 years, or so the peat bogs tell us. But a 20th century tangle of shifting circumstances, including two world wars, was the downfall of homegrown handkerchiefs. After 50 years, Helen Keys and Charlie Mallon (pictured) are reviving the tradition of growing flax for fibre in County Tyrone. Their ‘wee blue blossom’ is chemical free, sown with a fiddle, harvested by hand, scutched on a restored turbine, and threaded into local supply chains.
“We’ve been so lucky that we’ve been able to speak to people who remember the industry and worked in it,” says Keys. “It’s not just us. There have been little pockets of people that have kept bits of knowledge and kept things going. Our flax is part of a crop rotation. It’s not taking land out of food production; it’s part of a food production system. It’s important to view it as part of this diverse system where we are growing lots of things that fit together.”
We Feed The UK is out now, created by The Gaia Foundation and published by Papadakis
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