My allotment plot in central Birmingham, UK has 200-300 wild plant species and is surrounded by hedges. It’s my materials source, research site and a haven for people, and non-human species. There is nothing special about the place or once common plants apart from their abundance and diversity as their presence in the wild diminishes.

How we treat others shows them how we want to be treated

We are not separate from nature but deeply embedded within it, we are not objective observers but active participants in the natural world

Plants are everything, the clothes we wear, the food we eat, the air we breathe

Studio Practice

Devotional Practice: Practising Devotion

(2022 -ongoing)

Daily drawing of something small at my plot that catches my eye. I write a brief description, date and how I’m feeling or what I’m thinking. This simple act of attention not only provides an anchor or routine to my day, but stills my mind. It has become a barometer of how I’m feeling or what I’m thinking through the lense of wild plants.

Our situation and our needs are mutual; vulnerable, exhausted and close to overwhelm. We need space and time to regenerate.

Artist Network

Art, Ecology & Climate Justice Crit Club

Eastside Projects’ EOP (Extra Ordinary People) members network

3 online meetings over a 6 month period facilitated by Borbala Soos sharing work-in-progress through supportive discussion.

I began working with ink-dyed SCOBYs (Symbiotic Cultured Organisms of Bacteria & Yeast, used in fermenting) to explore ideas of mutual benefit for humans and non-humans. Dyed SCOBYs containing pressed plants of the dye source were returned to my allotment, nestled amongst their parent plants to break-down and feed the soil.

Fermented foods are equally beneficial for our gut micro-biome and for feeding soil microbes.

Artist Collaboration

Everything in the Forest is the Forest

Impressions Gallery, Bradford City of Culture

‘Everything in the Forest is the Forest’ is a project by photographer Clare Hewitt working with a community of 12 oak trees and individuals living close by who self-identified as isolated during the pandemic. (Learn more about Clare’s project here)

Clare, Danielle Phelps a paper maker, Emily Macaulay a book designer and myself have been collaborating for 2yrs to develop a sustainable photo book of the project.

Workshop

Abundance

We Are Spectra

I was part of the collaborative team designing, installing and animating an inclusive playground based on the natural world. The playground was in front of Birmingham City Hospital, part of Festival 2022 to coincide with the Commonwealth Games. My role included delivering a workshop to animate the space; we made cordage and wrote messages to the oak tree within the playground. The messages of appreciation and wonder were written in Oak Gall Iron ink made from galls gathered from the oak tree within the playground, hung from the tree using our cordage.

Participatory Project

Ink Flows

A3 ProjectSpace, Digbeth

“Inks Flows” used botanical ink making to explore ideas of community and participation. Covid-19 lock-down reshaped where the project was delivered (instead of the canal towpath I used my allotment), participant numbers (instead of public drop-in i offered samll bookable workshops) and directly linked with how we thought about community in a socially distant world, or participation when so many were alone.

Due to social distancing I offered a virtual ink-making workshop alongside small face2face workshops. These in person workshops at my allotment were more popular than online. despite this being the early days of ‘zoom’.

The process of foraging ingredients and making ink framed conversations about human, more-than-human and environmental wellbeing, reflecting the socially distant world we were inhabiting at the time.

The Growing Project

Grand Union

Between 2018 & 2023 I worked as artist-grower at several sites to cultivate crops, conversation and connection. I worked with residents at St Annes Hostel, Richmond House and the Minerva Women’s Group. The garden at Richmond House developed the woodland aspect of the site with wild plants from my allotment as the ‘mother garden’

The Growing Project was “a community-led growing scheme working with organisations who support the vulnerably housed and people in crisis.” Read more about the project HERE . Watch a short film about the woodland garden HERE

Artist Network

Inkollective

During the Covid-19 pandemic I lead an online ink making workshop. Particpants wanted more workshops, but I felt they knew enough to make ink. Instead i suggested we formed a supportive network who sent each other postcards and met to share our progress/ problems.

5 years later the 7 of us still meet online and send a set of postcards every month or so. 2024 we met IRL for the first time. Our friendship and interests stretch beyond inks, but they remain at the heart of our network.

Workshop

Tactics for Togetherness

British Art Show 9 (Wolverhampton Art Gallery)

Botanical ink workshop with asylum seekers and vulnerable adults that drew inspiration from the wild plants in the courtyard garden. We shared stories of medicinal and edible wild plants from our cultures, looked at how the plants grew in diverse, supportive communities and made work with a rnage of wild plant inks.

Commission

Natural Inks booklet

Creative Take-away for General Public

When the pandemic hit (2020) General Public commissioned a group of artists to create projects to be delivered with food parcels. The boxes were for families to make at home with what they would had on hand. Using kitchen scraps and food waste is an effective way to make ink.