A Little Patch of Ground London 2011

A Little Patch of Ground is a pioneering intergenerational food growing and performance project.

A Little Patch of Ground 2011 was a food growing and performance project that took place at Toynbee Studios, involving 25 local people from the East of London. Each week, beginning in May, the culturally diverse and intergenerational group met to create and grow their own permaculture inspired vegetable garden.

Image Gallery

The group cooked and ate together, and through a variety of media explored thoughts on food, resources, climate change, sustainability and interdependence.

Participants learned to explore the world as our shared home, through the sharing of personal stories about moments of connection in nature and undertaking documentation and writing tasks about special places outdoors. Through creative writing, making and drama activities, the group took a journey together, inspired by eco-philosopher Joanna Macy‘s behaviour change cycle of: Gratitude, Despair, Seeing with New Eyes, Going Forth.

In the last weeks of the project, these transformative personal experiences were woven together into a multi–media performance incorporating text, image, objects and movement that intimately reflected the shared stories, thoughts and ideas unearthed during the project. There were two performances in September which took place at Toynbee Hall.

The project was twinned with a rural version of A Little Patch of Ground which took place at Dartington in Devon. Each group met and created their projects independently in their respective localities, although they also found ways of sharing their contrasting urban and rural contexts with each other throughout the process and took a trip to see each other’s performance at the end of the project.

This project was funded by the Arts Council of England and supported by Artsadmin, Dartington Hall Trust, Transition Town Network and the Permaculture Association.

Project Links

Patch of Ground Devon 2011 | 8 min Patch Documentary | Image Gallery | Blog | Recruitment Flier | Performance Flier | Article in Positive News | Article on Treehugger