Landedness was a commissioning, co-creation, and engagement programme. Collaborating with artists and partners including MADEYOULOOK, Primary UK, Sakikhaya and Black Swan Society; Black people and people of colour (aged 18-35) in South Africa and the UK explored the idea of “landedness” in both cultural contexts. The project was supported by the British Council.
Sakhikaya are our friends from Lawley who started their community garden in 2021 and have worked with some of the broader art and growing community of ungovernable.
A workshop with Alphabet Zoo on monoprints and imagining the land and plant life together, together with some of Sakikhaya's broader community.
Artist Collaborators
The project has comissioned artists Zethu Maseko (working with Primary in the UK) Alphabet Zoo (working with us in South Africa) to develop responses to the themes of the project and to each work with a group of young people of colour around these themes. Additionally, MADEYOULOOK will be in residence with Primary in July 2022.
Workshops
In the UK, Zethu will work alongside a Gardening Facilitator / Gardener to co-design and deliver a set of four workshops around the subject of Black urban gardening. The workshops will focus on storytelling, introducing participants to South African native plants found in the UK landscape. She will encourage discussion around the displacement of indigenous plants such as Crocosmia, Agapanthus, Bamboo, Gerbera, and Osteospermum.
In South Africa, Sakikhaya and Black Swan Society will expand their existing collaboration around urban farming in Lawley, to exlore notions of relations to the land and farming within the context of South Africa's histories and contemporary realities. The community garden started in 2021 will continue to play a central role in this.
Alongside gardening, both projects will explore a range of activities such as art-making, zine-making, photography, writing and critical fabulation, and field recording. Towards the end of the programme, the participant groups will contribute photographs, writing, drawing and pressed images of the plants with information on their origins and uses, to a series of zines exploring questions of the land, ownership, and radical stewardship.
Landedness is supported by the British Council Cultural Exchange programme, which assists cultural organisations, festivals, artists, and creatives between the countries of SSA and the UK to create art, build networks, collaborate and develop markets and share artists’ work with audiences.