Mushroom For All

I saw the Youth Project open call on Instagram and became intrigued about the work Grow Wild was doing in terms of education, outreach, and connecting people to wildflowers and fungi. I had been interested in doing a project about fungi for a while and this felt like the perfect way to celebrate them through a collaboration between art and ecology. I was spending a lot of time gardening and doing art activities at Hoxton Trust Community Garden and they welcomed me to host another program there. 
 

Mushroom For All was a project built around connecting the local people of Hoxton Community Garden to the importance of fungi in our lives and ecosystems. Centred around the idea of sharing food, recipes, and stories, the workshops aimed to engage people through making and sensing fungi, while linking the environmental aspects with cultural connections speaking to wider issues.

I worked with artist Phoebe Hudson to host a mushroom papermaking workshop, whose work engages with ecology, community and materials. Mushroom papermaking is really fun - it involves mixing oyster and chestnut mushrooms with old newspapers to create a paste, which you put out on fabric to create little papers. It was an interesting way to test the idea of connecting people to the materials of mushrooms, thinking about how we can change and redesign our relationships with them. 

This led us to our next workshop: a collective recipe sharing. We had a picnic in Hoxton Community Garden open to everyone, with collaging, drawing and conversation about mushrooms and food where people generously shared recipes. 

I was interested in thinking about people who hadn't been to the Garden before, or who aren't always included in those spaces. 

For the third workshop, I was interested in thinking about people who hadn't been to the Garden before, or who aren't always included in those spaces. I worked with Susy (@queer.as.funghi on Instagram) to connect with queer people aged 18-25 in Hackney. Susy led an amazing queer walk around Hackney, introducing people to fungi as well as some myths and stories behind them. Participants were encouraged to think about why mushrooms are queer and their mutual aid networks and solidarity beneath the soil. We also had turkey tail mushroom tea, which is a very healing drink. 

I learned a lot about mushrooms from Susy's ID walk and that's given me the confidence to go out and try to identify things. Jelly ear fungus (Auricularia auricula-judae) is one of my favourites. It’s amazing to have learnt how much fungi can be used in our everyday lives, recipes, regenerative materials as well as art and design, such as mycelium bricks. The project has really drawn me to working hands-on with the soil and learn as much as I can about plants, fungi and their symbiotic relationships. I’ve learnt so much from some incredible gardeners, ecologists and local communities about this incredible life we have, even in the city, I now find it very difficult to walk down the street without stopping to look at all the plants!

Being part of this community and being able to run a workshop for young queer people has really opened up my eyes to how we can celebrate diversity in ecology and in our cities. 

I think the work that queer artists, gardeners and ecologists are doing to make environmental spaces more accessible is incredible. Being part of this community and being able to run a workshop for young queer people has really opened up my eyes to how we can celebrate diversity in ecology and in our cities. There’s an amazing community of people exploring queer ecology, and it’s such a joy to be a part of it.

The support from Grow Wild was great throughout the process and it was really helpful to have sessions on accessibility and inclusivity, which were essential to the aims of the project. I loved doing the Young Environmental Leader Award, which really helped me plan out the workshops in detail, think about practicalities, and gave some really important space for reflections and learnings. 

 It’s been great to be a part of the seeding process of this collection of green spaces across the city, thinking about how we can begin to build ecological and community corridors of change.

Since doing the project I’ve been working as a creative gardener with artist Romany Taylor, running art and gardening sessions with local families in North Kensington at ACAVA. We are transforming an inner-city concrete wasteland underneath the Westway Motorway into a food growing and creative space, which has been really inspired by my learnings during Mushroom For All.  We've been engaging with mycorrhizal fungi and soil health, getting families involved in the process. It’s been great to be a part of the seeding process of this collection of green spaces across the city, thinking about how we can begin to build ecological and community corridors of change.

Having this opportunity with Grow Wild has really given me the confidence to continue connecting people to ecology through art and biodiverse spaces in the city.

I’m hoping to graduate next year from my MLA in Landscape Architecture and with this I’d love to start to co-design ecological spaces in the city with local communities and artists. In the meantime, I’m working on a few projects including workshops around wild clay and land justice with Jessy Harper-Solomon, researching queer ecologies, continuing to garden in North Kensington, and recently I’ve joined Chelsea Physic Garden’s Youth Panel. 

Having this opportunity with Grow Wild has really given me the confidence to continue connecting people to ecology through art and biodiverse spaces in the city. Everyone I've met is so generous with their time and their knowledge. I would say to anyone who wanted to start a project or event, don't be afraid to contact anyone that's doing this kind of work already, there are so many ways to get involved.