| Project title: | How does our garden grow? |
| Location: | London, UK |
| Date(s): | May-June 2024, 14 July 2024 |
Artist statement
Sharon Neish, also working as Coleen Duff, is a London-based artist activist motivated by social, political and environmental issues. Her practice varies between site-specific, installation, performance and participatory art. Recent projects include No Message Protest (2023-), a collaborative protest artwork performed in Parliament Square to highlight how our freedom to demonstrate is being suppressed by authoritarian government, and Backpack Protest (2023-), an anti-pollution performance artwork during the London rush hour, which responded to her lived experience of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
How does our garden grow? (2024-) is a participatory art project that addresses the climate emergency and environmental threats posed by industrialisation and urbanisation. The artwork includes a community event in southeast London with ecological activities and a local history exhibition to inspire residents to protect biodiversity and preserve their heritage. The work also features a live digital archive documenting local history and ecology alongside a citizen science survey, which identified plant species that have survived the Victorian industrialisation of southeast London.
Contextual statement
project overview
How does our garden grow? (2024) is a socially engaged, participatory community art project presenting local history, memoir and ecological activities that encourage a city neighbourhood’s residents to start conversations and make connections with each other. It has evolved from my research question:
How can socially engaged art bring individuals together to reflect on issues like environmental loss, urbanisation, and the need to safeguard their heritage for future generations?
The project comprises two components. First, a community event I hosted on 14 July 2024 at a church hall in my neighbourhood East Dulwich, southeast London, which aimed to inspire residents to protect biodiversity and preserve local history. Its main feature was a history exhibition showing how the local natural environment was ravaged as the area was developed – from an Anglo-Saxon village to the location for an 18th century dairy farm, Friern Manor, whose rolling acres were then obliterated by Victorian urbanisation. In the Voices audio installation, elderly residents shared memories of the neighbourhood. A birdsong soundscape, seed bomb making workshops, seed sharing and tours of the church’s heritage orchard invited visitors to care for nature.
The second part (or second format) is a live digital archive documenting the local history displays and ecological activities from the community event, alongside a citizen science survey I conducted with fellow residents to identify local plants that survived 19th century urbanisation.
Sharon Neish, 2024, Voices installation: oral history audios on mp3 players, portrait photographs by Peter Cattrell
methodology and methods
The project’s community-oriented methodology draws its theoretical context from two of Claire Bishop’s three defining qualities of participatory art: authorship of the artistic outcome is shared, and community is integral to the work (Bishop 2006:12).
This shared creativity is “more egalitarian and democratic” than art by a single artist, aligning with my view that art which explores a community’s past and present is best made by a collective. The community event and digital archive aim to achieve this.
My project concurs with Bishop’s proposition that participatory art aspires to “a restoration of the social bond through a collective elaboration of meaning” by bringing a community together for conversations about history and ecology and continuing knowledge exchange via the live digital archive
Conversations during the community event and exhibition
three artists influenced my work
Christine Mackey’s site-specific, socially engaged practice influenced my connection to Friern Manor Farm’s location and to work with the local community. Her interest in seeds and the agency of plant matter (Mackey 2021) encouraged me to use seeds donated by residents in the seed bomb workshops and seed sharing.
Michele Allen’s The Weight of Ants in the World (2018-2023) documents ancient woodland on a Gateshead industrial estate with film and sound to examine industrialisation’s destruction of nature; my project invites participants to ponder how Friern Manor Farm’s biodiverse acres were buried by urbanisation. Allen’s collaboration with the local council and scientists influenced me to connect with local organisations and botanists.
Rachel Lichtenstein’s Our Hidden Histories (2013-), which features interviews with residents of London’s Jewish East End, reflects my belief in oral history’s importance for letting ‘real’ people tell their stories. This work informed my Voices installation.
collaborators
These included photographer Peter Cattrell, who collaborated with me on Voices; local historian Gavin Bowyer from the Dulwich Society; church orchard volunteers Leonie and David Saywell; audio video artists Rocío Dávila and Alex Neish who edited recordings and managed the technical set up; and the biodiversity co-ordinator at the Horniman Museum and Gardens.who edited recordings and managed the technical set up; and botanical specialists at the Horniman Museum and Gardens.
Documentation
Conversations in the community cafe
Viewers looking at a map to see where their house is located within the old Friern Manor Farm Estate
For more information
https://www.howdoesourgardengrow.com