We now come to the end of A Little Patch of Ground Urban/Rural 2011 in London and Devon. The last few weeks have been about opening the process out to be shared with other people through the performances.

We have been reflecting on what we have harvested from this project, the connections made, and where we go from here.

People from the London Patch of Ground group came for a day out to Dartington to see the performance and share experiences and reflections from the project. Over a traditional Devon cream tea (fresh scones made by Jane), people from both groups introduced each other. We then shared what the twinning of these two groups has brought to people’s experience of the project and what A Little Patch of Ground has brought to people’s lives. People spoke about companionship and connection, creativity and shared experience, family and the future, and more.

People from both groups have decided to keep in touch in the future.

In Devon, the performance was shared with over 200 people at Dartington and Totnes. We had our last session together on Thursday. Everyone brought a dish for a pot luck, and we all enjoyed out last meal together. We spent time in the garden, harvesting everything we could and reflecting on what we have harvested from this project. We shared a moment of silence as a farewell to the garden. We shared reflections on what this project has meant to us, and wrote personal messages in cards for each other.

There are threads that are continuing of this project in both places. The group in Devon are keen to continue meeting and growing together, and are in the process of finding where this could happen. The patch of ground on the Dartington estate will be staying in some form. In London, Honifa and Rayhana are involved in the school next to door to Toynbee, discussing a growing project that could happen there. There is even potential that A Little Patch of Ground could take place there in the future. And aside from these, there have been many seeds planted over the last five months, which we hope will grow and spread.

 

Thank you for reading this blog, and keeping in touch with the plants and people in A Little Patch of Ground in London and Devon!

 

 

In London, we had our last session together. We met outside at Toynbee Hall as we have done every week for five months. People brought food to share for our final dinner together. Rayhana and Hannah both made dishes from the pumpkins grown in the patch, which made a rich ending feast.

We watered and harvested more of the sweet tomatoes, finding the biggest tomatoe yet!

We spent the rest of the session evaluating, reflecting and celebrating this journey we have taken together. The younger members of the group showed each other around the garden and spoke about what they had learnt over the last five months. They then drew pictures of what it has meant to them to do this project with their families and what has changed in themselves and each other over this time.

The adults considered their learning and the distance travelled over the project. People recalled their hopes and fears that they shared in the first session at the beginning of May, and reflected how they have done in relation to these. People also wrote a letter to themselves to read in the future about what they are proud of and want to remember about their journey and experience on the project.

During dinner, we watched some of the film of the performance. After this, everyone wrote messages to each other on cards, which were then presented to everyone.

This was a rich and fulfilling session, allowing the group and creative team to reflect on the last five months, celebrate the performance and our time together and mark this ending.

 

Over the last couple of weeks everyone involved in A Little Patch of Ground in London and Devon have been busy making the performance pieces.

 

In London, the project came to fruition with the public performance event.

 

People in the group guided audience members around the garden. The journey of the plants and the people was brought to life through the garden installation, which included images of how the garden used to look and of people’s interactions with it over the whole project. The audience were then invited upstairs into a large performance space at Toynbee Hall, where the group shared who they are and the journey they’ve taken together through a multimedia performance piece.

Here are some of the audience responses to the performance…

This has encouraged me to get more involved in my community.

It proves it’s worth finding a reason to meet new people you wouldn’t normally meet, and that communities don’t have to be just who you live next door to.

I’m going to go home and dig my garden – and maybe apologies to my neighbours for being loud!

I’m taking away a renewed sense of hope and energy to continue my activism.

I valued the connection that the performance made between the simple act of food growing and wider social and environmental concerns. Thanks you in abundance – let’s keep growing!

A realisation that even small events can have a large impact.

The yard (at Toynbee Hall) has been brought to life!

We don’t mix between our local generations enough – I want to try to and do this.

This has made me think about how I can create growth around me – growth in relationships, growth in food. This should be a compulsory project across all communities.

I will make an effort to meet my neighbours that I have wondered who they are.

There was an exquisite joy/sadness combined in seeing very small children tell their stories so truthfully whilst also imagining how enormous and challenging the future/their futures could be beyond my own lifetime.

I will take away a spirited sense of people working together to create and celebrate their lives.

Things really are as simple as nurturing the soil and checking the worms are ok, and the fun in that. Small actions can have v.v.v.v. large impact.

How special to witness such honesty and delight.

In Devon, we are in the final stages of putting the performance together. We have also been in dialogue about how the group could continue on after this project has finished, as so many people wish to carry on this journey began together.

Last Saturday, some people from the patch Devon group travelled to London to meet the the Patch London group and see their performance. After the performance, we shared some local East End bagels from Brick Lane, and people from both groups learned a bit about each other and discussed what it has meant to be twinned with each others projects. People spoke about feeling connected even though the groups are from very different environments and quite far away from each other. Someone shared their surprise that the issues and difficulties of land use and growing are in fact very similar in rural and urban environments. We also shared what impact this project has had on our lives and how we see the world.

The London group are looking forward to coming to Devon to see the performance next Saturday. Performances in Devon are at Dartington Space Friday 7th, Saturday 8th, and on Tuesday 12th at Totnes Civic Hall in Totnes. Please see blog entry ‘A Little Patch of Ground Performance Dates’ for details.

 

In London, there was an enourmous downpour of rain, so no need to water this week! We harvested the first of the tomatoes (which we all appreciated at dinner). Someone found a green chili growing on the mound in the centre of the patch.

In Devon, we spent time seed saving - taking the seeds of fennel, sweet peas, nasturtium and more, to save for next year. Jess facilitated a discussion on seed saving, and we spoke about the radical act of saving seeds.

In London, it was a small group this week, so we spent time working individually on what people might share in the performance presentation. Followed by a delicious meal including sough-dough bread from a local bakery, spelt pasta salad, and a salad of tomatoes, broccoli and leaves from the garden.

In Devon, we continued to develop the performance presentation. We looked into how we can share the more difficult issues we have explored over the project - people’s pain for the world. Some people recreated sculptures using other people that they had made in response to ‘what breaks my heart about being alive in the world today is…’. Some people asked questions about images from around the world. Others wrote and created a dialogue in response to the question, ‘What is it like to live now?’.

Both groups are putting the performance presentation together. Towards the end of September, both groups will finally get to meet each other when there will be a trip to Dartington for the East Enders at Toynbee, and a trip to Toynbee for the group in Devon.

 

 

This week we met again in London for a reconnection with the garden after time away. The tomatoes and the broccoli have blossomed over august, and we harvested them along with healthy helpings of chives and basil. The marigolds (calendula officinalis), so yellow and bright earlier in the summer had now browned and slackened, their flower heads darkened, dried and turned in on itself. We collected its seeds, noting the beautiful sculptured shapes that this seasonal turning had created. Seed saving is a wonderful way of closing the circle of growth of a plant’s life-cycle. Collecting the seeds produced by the dying plant, we can make ready for sowing the next seasons flowers. The body of the plant goes into the compost, so its nutrients can be cycled, and be used to enrich plants growing in the future.

While looking ahead to what’s to come, we also look back at what has grown before. So we took remembering tours in pairs around the patch, pointing out stories in places around the garden. Fiona and Rosalie revisited the edge they had observed during the permaculture principles session, Ele showed Steph which plants she remembered as seedlings. In this way we practice storytelling and place-making, preparing to share our experiences of the patch with others.

In Devon, we met after the summer break, welcoming familiar faces back. There was a great flurry of activity in the garden: potatoes were harvested, cabbages pulled up, beans picked, Pan the dog running around excitedly, weeding and general harvesting. It was a time to get our hands dirty and reconnect with the garden and each other.

We spent the rest of our session beginning to piece together the performance presentation, which will involve people sharing experiences and a bit about who they are. We heard letters people had written from the future to themselves and worked on people’s introductions.

 

 

For dinner, we had a feast of garden produce (it was agreed that the potatoes were particularly tasty) and rich celery and cheese soup made by Jennie.

As we continue to share, the garden continues to share a lot too!

PERFORMANCE DATES
London
Wednesday 21st September, Toynbee Studios, 7pm

Friday 23rd September, Toynbee Studios, 7pm

Saturday 24th September, Toynbee Studios, Matinee 3pm
To buy tickets follow this link http://www.artsadmin.co.uk/events/2938
Devon

Friday 7th October, Dartington, 7.30 pm

Saturday 8th October, Dartington, Matinee 3pm

Tuesday 11th October, Totnes Civic Hall, 7.30pm
To buy tickets follow this linkhttp://www.dartington.org/arts/encounters

 

Over the past two weeks we have had our ‘Patch Summer Sessions’. In London, Rich, a wild food expert, guided us on a wild food walk around the local area near Toynbee. We harvested some of the food we found, such as mustard flowers, common mallow, elderberries and yarrow leaves (which we made into tea). After exploring the local area and seeing how much it is possible to pick and eat in just a small area of London, we prepared a summer feast. Our dinner included Rosalie’s victoria sponge cake decorated with flowers from the garden. We made salads with the produce we’d collected on the walk and from the garden.

Over dinner, we had a cabaret, where people shared small performances prepared in response to the themes of Patch. We heard Steph play and sing on the piano, Hannah play a song about flowers on the guitar, Laurie and Tex perform a song together, and Ele read some lines from a special book. We also had Rosalie guide us in making paper boats that we floated in a bowl of water, Ruth shared a poem, Sarah performed some cartwheels, and Fiona shared a section of a book that’s important to her. It was a rich way to end before our two week summer break.

In Devon, the ‘summer session’ gave us a wonderful opportunity to explore the beautiful grounds at Dartington and to discover the abundance of wild foods and medicines that are growing here. We all met in the patch garden and then split into two groups – one group went for a walk around Dartingtons formal gardens, guided by Jennie B and Tess, a local wild fooder with a wealth of knowledge. The second group wanted a longer walk, and so went down to the river to see what wild food they could find along the banks of the River Dart. Both groups came back having found many things, including a puffball mushroom (an excellent edible), meadowsweet which is a natural painkiller, sorrel, limeflowers, st johns wort and many other things. We then all shared a picnic-style dinner, and each group spoke briefly about the wild foods and medicines we had found.

In Devon, we had a separate session for the cabaret. We had a feast of sharings. Jennie had spent the whole of the last week making a textile recreation of the garden and how it looked at the beginning of the project. She then taught a few people to crochet flowers and plants, which will be the flowers and plants we’ve planted in the garden over the last three months. We heard a song (dedicated to Pan the dog) by Jane, a puppet show about the earth from Emily, an improvised piano piece from Oscar and two poems written and performed by River. We also heard a poem with images from Sue, a song taught to us all by Ruth, some poems from Wendy written in the past and a story told by Vicky. We saw a shadow puppet show from Charlie, a short story from David and a cake made live to a Cat Stevens song by Sarah. As part of our dinner, we harvested the first of the spring onions and made an enormous salad which included beetroot.

In September Patch will be back, and we’ll be focusing on creating ways to share personal experiences and our time on patch in a multi-media performance.

 

This week the groups and the gardens have enjoyed a lot of sunshine. We have had to make sure we water the gardens as much as we can. We had a few blueberries in Devon, and more figs in London!

Both groups spent time in their patches this week voicing what we can see, hear, smell and feel in and from the patches. This new way of experiencing the patch was a rich way of getting to know the gardens and their surrounding environment.

In London we enjoyed a pot luck and in Devon Lynn, David and Luce cooked a rich homemade dinner including David’s popular beans in sesame seed source.

After dinner, we spent time working with the letters from the future people wrote last week. People worked together to find different ways of presenting these. In London and Devon, people shared an object that has special meaning and is personally important. This was a powerful way of getting to know each other better and people enjoyed hearing stories about these important objects.

Next week, both groups are going on a wild food walk in the local area, followed by a cabaret where people will share a skill, idea or small performance inspired by the themes of Patch.

 

Both patches are in full bloom, with more to harvest every week. In London, we picked some figs from a fig tree that has been growing at Toynbee Hall for years, as well as a rich mixture of salad leaves and flowers, and a rhubarb. In Devon, we harvested more spinach, and shared a pie for dinner cooked by Ruth with courgettes from the garden and coleslaw made from cabbage picked in the patch. It’s great to be eating so much produce from the gardens.

 

In London, we explored heritage seeds and seed saving, discussing how we can save seeds and keep the diversity of plants going into the future. In Devon, we were introduced to biodynamics, and looked into the luna cycle and how the moon relates directly to plants, how they grow and ourselves. From heritage seeds and luna cycles, we continued to look deeper into ancestors and the future.

 

The young people in the London group travelled 25 years into the future on a time machine, and took messages back to the adults in 2011 about what the ideal future could be and what we need to give us the strength to carry on now. The adults in London and the whole group in Devon, participated in a Joanna Macey exercise, The Double Circle. The people in the centre circle face the people in the outer circle. Those on the outside are in the present, those on the inside are future beings come to ask questions and listen to the people of today. The people sitting on the outside circle talk to the ‘future beings’ about what it is like to live now, the problems we face and the difficulties and fears that we feel, as well as the role we took to change things and how we found the strength to carry on. After this, people spent time by themselves writing themselves a letter from an ancestor in the future, for example someone’s great, great grand daughter. This letter from a future ancestor gave advice and council, and courage to carry on. Some people shared their letters with the group, which were heartwarming to hear.

 

This has been a rich week and we have enjoyed a lot of home made food. After next week (week 12) we will have two summer sessions (a trip and a cabaret - which will be on the blog soon). Patch will then be on holiday for the last two weeks of August. We then come back together in September to work on and put together the performances