A presentation focussing on award-winning projects that engage communities creatively and exploring how similar project could work in your communities. This supports the workshop given by Anne-Marie Culhane at the Eden Project, as part of the Big Lunch Extras programme. Find out more about Big Lunch Extras at www.biglunchextras.com

5. In my practice at different moments I am ,
performing, dancing, book binding, crafting,
negotiating, documenting, harvesting, planting,
choreographing, listening, holding spaces, saving
seeds, foraging, brewing, cooking, lobbying,
welcoming, protesting, interviewing, writing
poetry, feasting, responding, walking,
exchanging, drawing, collecting, designing,
negotiating, shaping, observing, researching,
inviting people in.

6. why do I do what I do?

8. April 2013, Cornwall

9. Response-Ability
Projects invite alternative ways of doing and being.
My practice involves listening, observation and responding to or with people or places
often in collaboration and through dialogue. This is often with existing communities or
bringing a new community together around a common theme. These ‘communities of
interest’ often grow and develop beyond the duration of the project.
Permaculture Principals and ethics provide project the project backbone.
Joanna Macy (eco-philosopher) in Coming Back to Life outlines three ways of working
towards a life-sustaining society. These categories are very useful in helping to make a
framework for my practice:
• Holding Action
• Creating New Structures
• Shifting Perceptions to realise our interdependence

10. The importance of the intensely local –
Naome Klein

11. THE CONTEMPORARY FOOD system is inherently unsustainable. Indicators
of social, environmental and economic performance, such as food security,
greenhouse-gas emissions, food miles, lower farm incomes and biodiversity
loss highlight this fact. Extracts from a report, Eating Oil: Food Supply in a Changing Climate, Andy Jones,
Elm Farm Research Centre 2001
The most political act we do on a daily basis is to eat – Dr Jules Pretty

12. Abundance & Grow Sheffield
www.growsheffield.com
Vision:
To create a harvest season of practical, creative events and activities to bring people
together across the city to celebrate food growing and the local harvest.
Funded by : South Yorkshire Community Champions Fund, Earthcare Trust, Open Gate
Trust, Arts Council, National Lottery

14. In gardens, backyards, parks, hospital grounds, cemeteries, canal-sides, gap sites

16. In Sheffield we
found:
Plums,
greengages,
hazlenuts,
walnuts,
pears,
apples,
cherries,
damsons
quinces
medlars
peaches!

17. Photo by PH

29. Abundance Handbook
Free Download: http://growsheffield.com/abundance/

31. Fruit Routes/Eat Your Campus
www.fruitroutesloughborough.wordpress.com
Vision:
The vision of Fruit Routes is to plant fruit, nut trees and edible plants along
footpaths and cycle paths across the university campus creating a spring snowfall
of blossom and an autumnal abundance of fresh fruits and berries for
harvesting, eating and distributing. Different varieties of pears, plums, damsons,
greengages, hazels, almonds, apples and hedgerow species suited to the local
environment and the changing climate will be planted with and cared for by
people who live, work and pass through these places providing an annual feast
for years to come. Fruit Routes provides an enriched habitat for people, plants,
insects and animals as well as a location for cultural activities and outdoor
learning. 2009
Funded by : Loughborough University and Big Tree Fund

33. Shed On Wheels
www.amculhane.co.uk
Vision:
To integrate the arts of imagination and the visual arts with practical skills of
growing, cooking and harvesting. The mobile unit acts as an active tool for
combining these objectives using green design techniques to create a
temporary roving space that moves between different neighbourhoods and
events. It will act as meeting place, eating place, a site of creative interaction,
exchange, sharing and discussion. Working with local people and visitors the
S.O.W will become a multi authored evolving installation using a combination
of photography, visual arts and text, cooking and eating to explore themes of
people, their environment and food.
Funded by Arts Council/National Lottery, Cooperative Community Fund and
Plymouth City Council

39. Shed on Wheels, Plymouth Art Centre, 2012

40. Stonehouse Seedstore
www.amculhane.co.uk
Vision: An ark of seeds
To collect 100 stories about our connections to and relationships with plants
Sourcing seeds and cuttings of these plants as a community resource and a
celebration of diversity and making seeds are available for free to anyone
who wants to grow in Stonehouse as an evolving community resource.
Funded by : Awards for All and supported by Stonehouse Action and
Stonehouse Timebank

42. Seedstore at Plymouth Art Centre 2015, photo copyright PhotoNow

43. Singing to the Trees – A Wassail for 2015
Vision:
To create a new Wassail song to be sung at Exeter Community Garden to the new
orchard. Referencing observed changes in seasonal patterns and their impacts on
orchards highlighting climate change on a local level to contemporise this tradition.
Funded by:
CCANW (centre for contemporary art & the natural world) Kaleider, University of
Exeter

45. Emergent themes :
Lots of different ways to participate
Seasonality/repeating cycles and events
Inter-generational
Collaboration
Craft of Care
Permaculture principals & ethics
Fun!

47. Humans are capable of a unique trick, creating
realities by first imagining them, by experiencing
them in their minds. ...As soon as we sense the
possibility of a more desirable world ,we begin
behaving differently, as though that world is starting
to come into existence, as though, in our mind’s eye ,
we are already there. The dream becomes an
invisible force which pulls us forward. By this
process it begins to come true. The act of imagining
somehow makes it real..... And what is possible in
art becomes thinkable in life. Brian Eno

48. Imagining the future
What do you see in your
community?