Seeding an Imaginative Future
An artists panel talk for the Seed Gathering 2023
3pm, Sunday 12th February 2023
UK and international artists working at the forefront of cultural engagement with farming, seed saving and the politics of our food systems will join Artist and Creative Director of Custom Food Lab, Cherry Truluck in conversation. The panellists will be invited to share their current practice and discuss the potential of art as a vehicle to invigorate change and collectively imagine hopeful futures, asking:
How can contemporary art and community practices of seed-saving and growing learn from each other in solidarity and safety?
How can we work co-creatively and sustainably to develop and share a deep understanding of the local whilst attending to our roles in a global (translocal) community?
How can social/environmental movements acknowledge and embed different knowledge systems and ways of sharing (including cultural/arts engagement) without appropriating marginalised knowledge or being co-opted themselves?
Speakers:
Emilio Hernández Martínez (Cocina CoLaboratorio)
Andy Merritt (Something & Son)
Custom Food Lab have joined forces with the Gaia Foundation on the Seed Gathering 2023 as the arts programming partner, joining as part of our Arts Council funded project Seeding the Commons. As well as this panel talk, we have co-curated a Zine with the Gaia Seed Sovereignty team (let me know your address if you would like a copy!), created a selection of recipes, programmed a film screening, a series of meditations and a community growing discussion. For more information: https://www.seedingthecommons.org/seed-gathering-2023/
Amanda Couch – Becoming with Wheat and Other More-Than-Human Others (Photography by Jolyon Gardner) 
Raju Rage – Grow Not Build 
Andrew Merritt (Something and Son) – Intertidal Allotment 
Cherry Truluck – The Animist Almanac: rudimentary rhythms (photography by Anne Tetzlaff) 
Emilio Hernandez Martinez (Cocina CoLaboratorio) – the Biocultural Living Archive www.archivo.bio