Join us for a day exploring community climate action and regenerative artistic practices through three live projects from across the UK.
Contested zones on the edges of urban expansion, liminal spaces where nature and industry intertwine, and peripheral sites of infrastructure are increasingly holding unique ecological and social potential in the response to climate change and environmental injustice.
These locations, often defined by their contradictions – neither urban nor rural, common nor private, productive nor wastelands – are often being explored by artists, activists, and communities as places to nurture resistance, care, and learning.
Throughout the day, we will hear three case studies from arts organisations that are each cultivating regenerative art practices in sites like these. Round table conversations and panel discussions will bring together artists, curators, and communities at the forefront of reimagining the care of our environment, to collectively consider how we can collaborate as the guardians and agents of climate action.
Ahead of the in-person event, Floating University Berlin will be hosting an accompanying online reading group. Open to all, it will be an informal setting to collectively read and reflect on a number of texts that expand upon the ideas behind the symposium – stay tuned for more details!
The case studies that will be presented on the day are:
Intertidal Allotment – Cement Fields
Intertidal Allotment is a long-term project by Andrew Merritt in Sheerness, which takes inspiration from the traditional allotment form and expands it into the intertidal zone – the area of the seashore covered at high tide and uncovered at low tide. By exploring the unique egalitarian model of the allotment, which is often found on the edge of urban areas, and transposing it to the space where the sea meets the land, the project seeks to revitalise sustainable and communal methods of food production and foster new forms of community stewardship. The aim is to create a modular and sustainable system that responds to the needs of local people, and which can be replicated in other coastal locations.
Beneath the Pavement, the Marshes – Three Rivers
Beneath the Pavement, the Marshes is a three-year action-research programme developed with Friends of Crossness Nature Reserve that brings together the practices of artists, ecologists and activists whose work responds to the unique challenges facing Bexley’s Marshes today; including the struggle to stop a new carbon capture plant from being built on Crossness Nature Reserve, which would destroy a natural carbon sink, and result in the loss of one of only four Local Nature Reserves in the borough. Grounded within the community-led efforts to protect Bexley’s threatened marshlands, the programme is creating a network of new alliances between communities fighting to save vital local landscapes, and leading national and international artists and ecologists, to collectively test out different ways of sensing, sharing and protecting the ground beneath our feet.
The Growing Project – Grand Union
With community development and regenerative practices at its core, The Growing Project is a circular, transformative community programme in the heart of Birmingham. Working with artists, designers, gardeners, ecologists, Grand Union work compassionately to facilitate and support people experiencing physical, social, environmental and economic disadvantages. Together, as they remediate land and bring life back to spaces, they develop communal knowledge and support up-skilling to create sustainable life practices. Since 2019, Grand Union have made seven different growing sites across Birmingham, three of which are in the heart of the city on canal-side sites, and are currently working towards creating a new Flower Farm community business.
From the Edge is a Cement Fields Symposium with Three Rivers, Grand Union, and Floating University Berlin. Supported by The National Lottery Community Fund through their Climate Action Fund.
This event is free to attend, but booking is required.
We have 10 bursary places available, each providing £50 to support travel and expenses for attendees. Bursaries are offered on a discretionary, first-come, first-served basis. They are intended for those who are on no/low income, self-employed, or who would not be able to attend otherwise, with no obligation to provide evidence.
If you have any questions about bursary tickets, contact us at info@cementfields.org.
10:30 – Arrival
11:00 – Introduction
11:15 – Session One: Case Studies
12:30 – Lunch*
13:30 – Session Two: Creative Practice & Community Engagement Break Out Groups
14:30 – Break*
15:00 – Session Three: Panel discussion and Q&A
15:45 – Final Thoughts
16:00 – End
*Hot drinks and a vegetarian/vegan lunch will be provided. Please notify us of any intolerances or allergies when booking your ticket.
Three Rivers
Three Rivers is an action-research programme, founded in a practice of creative care for people and places in Bexley, which supports communities to engage with arts and culture by experiencing their surroundings in new ways.
Since being founded in 2019 they have supported local people to use their everyday creativity for collective action inspired by Bexley’s unique landscapes, and each of their projects grows from how locations are already being used rather than what we ideally might like to impose on them, in this way they recognise that their place has its own agency and their community extends beyond the human.
This year Three Rivers became the first organisation in the UK to adopt the Zoöp model; a way of working in which living ecosystems are actively represented in the organisation’s decision-making.
Grand Union
Grand Union is an arts organisation located in Digbeth, Birmingham. It is a place and an art practice that holds space for developing artistic, cultural, social and environmental relations for building equitable living. They have housed a gallery and artists’ studios for over a decade, and work in collaborative partnerships with artists and communities across the city.
Grand Union produce and commission artworks, exhibitions, and creative projects that connect our past and present with our future. The work is held in careful relationships which are forged in making, planting, cooking, listening, learning, questioning, and advocating together. Experienced through different sites, spaces, and environments: the gallery, garden, kitchen, and studio. Their programme weaves in and out of the gallery space through a series of happenings, environments and activisms.
Floating University Berlin
Floating University Berlin is a Natureculture learning site on and in the rainwater retention basin of former Berlin-Tempelhof airport, a fully functioning urban infrastructure and offshore campus run by a non-profit organisation, Floating e.V.
It is in solidarity with the history of the site and with the lineage of alternative narratives for urban development that the Floating e.V. situates its mission: to open, maintain, and take care of this unique site while bringing non-disciplinary, radical, participatory and collaborative programs to the public. In other words, it is a place to learn to engage, to embrace the complexity and navigate the entanglements of the world, to imagine and create different forms of living.
Cement Fields
Cement Fields is a visual art organisation working collaboratively with artists and communities to create ambitious new art along the Thames Estuary in North Kent.
Our programme is an exploration of place and process, defined by the multiple shifting landscapes that stretch along the Thames from Dartford to Whitstable. It’s a place where boundaries blur, where busy urban centres sit alongside industrial sites, where waters slow in marshes and wetlands, and the major arteries of rivers and roads connect rural areas and seaside towns.
We invite artists, participants and audiences to use North Kent’s unique contexts to ask radical questions and explore new ideas. Through this interaction we create experimental new art and develop imagination, skills and pathways in creative careers.
