Join artists Maybelle Peters and Navi Kaur in discussing and learning how to grow fresh fruit and vegetables.

Maybelle and Navi will be in conversation with Primary’s Jade Foster, thinking about how traditions of growing can be passed down from generation to generation, within families and communities as a form of cultural memory. Maybelle will talk about her constantly changing approach to growing. Navi will contemplate how allotments, as a site for cultural production, influence her artistic practice and enable her to rethink her approach to making art.

Together we will think about how allotments can become spaces of refuge, rest, and a place where generosity is offered in abundance. What is the potentiality of these spaces for individual and collective healing?

Maybelle didn’t have access to a garden growing up in west London but was surrounded by lots of green spaces where blackberry bushes grew along the boundary fence surrounding the housing estate. Although there were allotments less than a five-minute walk from home, it wasn't until a teacher set up a gardening club at her middle school that she became really interested in growing food.

For this Skillshare Maybelle will show us how we can create our own compost and demonstrate how to grow a potato. Navi will show us how to sow seeds and grow herbs and vegetables in pots at home. She will share tips on how to look after your home-grown veggies passed down to her by her grandparents.

Our regular Skillshares are opportunities to learn, meet new people, and discuss the resources and skills we can share in our communities. These events are free and everyone is welcome.

This event will take place online via Zoom. Book your place here.

Courtesy of Navi Kaur

Maybelle Peters is a London based artist and filmmaker working in film and CGI. Her practice focuses on storytelling using documentary, historical events, literature and oral narratives. She gained her bachelor’s degree in Animation at Farnham where she made her first commissioned film for BBC2. Her Channel 4 commissioned film, Mama Lou, has been shown extensively at animation festivals including Annecy, Ottawa and the Edinburgh Film Festival as well as broadcast television. She is the recipient of the inaugural Womxn of Colour art award. Her work was shown as part of The Place is Here exhibition at Nottingham Contemporary and South London Gallery in 2017. Maybelle is a practice-based PhD candidate at UCA Farnham and her practice explores allegorical tales and myth making and more recently looks at gleaning stories from objects, personal rituals and an archive of ephemera, gestures and sounds.

Navi Kaur (b. 1993) is an artist and arts educator based in Birmingham, UK. Inspired by the lives of her paternal grandparents, Surinder (‘Budimom’) and Karamjit (‘Baba Ji’), Navi’s work intimately and playfully documents themes of domestic, cultural, and spiritual significance. She traces interpersonal dialogues and daily activities through digital photography, film, and installation, demonstrating the abounding resilience of first-generation immigrants, the wonders of the everyday, and the compelling expressions of the Sikh Dharam. Thus, Navi’s artistic process doubles as a method of self-inquiry, facilitating investigations into the physical and intangible dimensions of her cultural heritage.

Navi is currently researching and documenting the lives of the South Asian communities who have settled and work in the rural West Midlands for a photographic series commissioned by GRAIN Projects. She has exhibited her work across the UK and overseas, including Reminders Photography Stronghold, Coventry Biennial, Manchester Contemporary, Recent Activity, Herbert Art Gallery and Museum, ORT Gallery and Gallery Celine. Upcoming shows include group exhibitions at Grand Union Gallery and Moseley Road Baths.

Navi is also a qualified arts educator, who teaches Art and Design at a Handsworth-based secondary school and facilitates workshops in artist-led and museum spaces.

Written by Harr-Joht Takhar

Courtesy of Navi Kaur

Resources

As a way of sharing research and knowledge we have compiled the resources below, please take a look:

Recipes For Resistance by Raju Rage

The publication spans poetry, testimonies, articles, cross generational conversations, interviews, illustrations, photography and recipes. It includes contributions from Raisa Kabir, Sabba Khan, Queer Masala, Nandini Moitra, Zarina Muhammad, Raju Rage, YSK Prerana, Vijeta Kumar, Edible Archives and WAH! Womxn Artists of Colour.

Dreams of Green Beans (2019) by Navi Kaur

A short documentary film exploring environment, relationships, land rights, preservation, self-sustainability and the malleability of culture.

Filmed at Navi's grandparent's allotment near their home, which they have had since 1971.