- Centre for Contemporary Art and the Natural World | Bristol, UK
The commission from the Centre for Contemporary Art and the Natural World was to animate two Coil Culture exhibitions as the UK contribution to UN International Year of the Soils. Through three months of engagements with people and the land of Bristol, we evolved Soil Saturdays as a diverse program that spanned the eight Saturdays of the exhibitions.
The matter of living soil and food was present within the galleries, on the Soil Shrine, as part of activities, and nourishingly manifest through freshly prepared food sourced from Bristol and its hinterland and cooked in collaboration with Daphne Lambert of the Greencuisine Trust. This emergent approach revitalised a dedication to everyday actions and policymaking that restore and protect healthy soils, including the generation of a City-wide Declaration for Soil as well as the film, Soil Saturdays, presented at the European Parliament’s Green Party Conference.
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Soil is the source of all life. Soil Saturdays is a timely celebration to remind the world that we are all children of the living soil.
Satish Kumar, Resurgence and Ecologist magazine and Schumacher College
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This Soil Culture collaboration brought heart-centred arts into popular and political consciousness and making new ground for policy making.
Maddy Longhurst, Founder of The Blue Finger Alliance to protect Bristol’s food growing soils
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This Special Commendation is awarded for your trans-disciplinary work in social engagement, including research on ecological thinking for sustaining cultures in balance with nature.
Soil Culture at Create initiative received the AWE-inspiring commendation from the Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management (CIWEM)
Resource | ‘Curating the Convivial’ published in Geohumanties journal + Soil Saturdays film made in collaboration with Joanne Barker. Soil Saturdays film as part of Soil Culture publication