During 2021, artist Chiara Dellerba undertook a period of research to expand her ongoing project The Chimera Plantarium. She has tested out a model for working with local people in Radford and Lenton to map, rethink and redesign public places from the perspective of plants plants - with the ultimate goal of revealing the beauty and biological wealth of these great protagonists of the living world.
The Chimera Plantarium Weekend will present this research through a series of activities, bringing together different people to share their knowledge around plants, city planning and collaborative design.
Book for just one session or join us for the whole weekend. All events are free, but places are limited and booking is essential. If you have any questions or access needs please contact rebecca@weareprimary.org
Image courtesy of Chiara Dellerba
The Chimera Planetarium Weekend revolves around four activities with collaborators from around the country who have developed a unique relationship with urban plants - whether intellectual, scientific, or aesthetic.
Saturday 2 October 2021
11am- 1pm: Foraging the city with Phytology
Walk
Join Chiara Dellerba and Michael Smythe of Phytology for a walk in the neighbourhood to discover and collect urban medicinal plants and engage in conversation about how urban plants, often cast aside as ‘weeds’, can be beneficial to both our ecosystem and our health.
2pm- 4pm: Healing the hood with Rasheeqa Ahmad
Workshop
Join Chiara Dellerba and community herbalist Rasheeqa Ahmad of Hedge Herbs, based in London, for a knowledge-sharing and practical plant medicine workshop.
Sunday 3 October 2021
11am-1pm: Tree ID with Wild.NG
Walk
Take a walk with Alex Begg of Wild.NG and find out about trees growing locally – the benefits that trees provide; why we should cherish them; and how to find locations to successfully establish new trees.
2pm- 4pm: Urban Planning: NG beyond dreams
Workshop
Due to unforseen circumstances this event has been postponed - look out for a new date when it's rescheduled.
A collective urban planning session to discover and reimagine neglected green spaces in Radford. During the session with urban designer Alexandra Chairetaki, we will use drawing and design tools to map local spaces. Participants will be invited to define new values and narratives, and imagine different possible uses in the form of a manifesto.
Contributors:
Chiara Dellerba
Chiara Dellerba is an artist based in Nottingham. Her work focuses on ecology, slow down and collective-care practices and their civic impact on society. She makes installations, interactive performances, collaborative-based works and books as toolkits to investigate the city, the environment and the future of our society. In 2017 she co-founded F-L-A-T-5, an interdisciplinary research space which explores domestic narratives and place making dynamics.
In 2019, she founded Zona Planetaria, a research-based residency programme which promotes slowing down and contemplation as practices in which caring, resting, suspending can be reclaimed as political acts by and for everyone.
Her work has been exhibited across different countries: Marilena Bonomo (Bari), Macro Museum (Rome), Alessandra Bonomo (Rome), Sara Zanin (Rome), Onetwentyeight gallery (New York), Kiyomiyamagishi (Nagano, Japan), Attenborough Arts Centre (Leicester), Mac (Birmingham), NAE (Nottingham), 58th Venice Biennale (Venice). Her current work is focused on the development of the Chimera Plantarium, a multidisciplinary investigation program on urban spontaneous plants and their contribution in rethinking and redesign public places.
Michael Smythe
Michael Smythe is an artist, urban farmer and creative director of Nomad Projects, an independent arts foundation that develops experimental projects across digital and location-specific spaces. Nomad Projects critically engages with issues surrounding environmental and social equality within the urban landscape.
Current projects include Phytology, an urban physic garden and research institute in Bethnal Green (East London), Urban Mind - a global research project investigating the relationship between the landscape and mental health, and Mobile Apothecary, a herbal medicine dispensary providing free healthcare to individuals and communities with limited access to accommodation and quality health care.
Michael studied installation, performance and art history at the Australian National University, Canberra, and Hochschule Der Künste, Berlin.
Rasheeqa Ahmad
Rasheeqa (Hedge Herbs) is a herbalist in her community in Walthamstow in North London. She has been practicing since 2012, offering treatment with herbal medicine and teaching about its many aspects, alongside a wider mix of work whose aim is connecting us as communities with the potential of this knowledge and craft as a way to develop healthier living systems and relationships. She is inspired by her early involvement with the Radical Herbalism Gathering in exploring how to make plant medicine accessible and restore balance to its practice in the contexts of systemic inequalities and oppressions that are part of our shared histories.
Rasheeqa is part of the Community Apothecary in her locality, a CIC that brings community members together around a patchwork of medicinal herb gardens where they can learn about growing, wildcrafting and making medicines together, exchanging knowledge and peer support and seeding the model in other neighbourhoods so that we create landscapes of healing everywhere! She is also involved with the Mobile Apothecary in Bethnal Green, a street medicine distribution project bringing solidarity herbal healthcare to people from rough sleeper and less well-resourced communities there.
Wild. NG
Wild.NG aims to aid nature’s recovery where we live in Nottingham, by creating active communities, street by street. We want to inspire a new energy of action for nature and create extraordinary opportunities, which are positive for local people and the natural world. We host events, lead on campaigns, share knowledge and connect communities.
Wild.NG is a volunteer led project, for local people and led by local people. Based in the north of Nottingham city (Carrington, Sherwood, Forest Fields, Basford, Mappery and St Ann's), we also link up with Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust to share ideas, knowledge and skills.
Alex Begg is a member of Wild.NG and for his day job manages trees owned by the city council.
Alexandra Chairetaki
Alexandra Chairetaki is a London-based urban designer and landscape architect. Her approach is influenced by her studies and work experience from Denmark and Greece where she lived prior to moving to the UK. Currently, she works as a senior urban designer at Planit-IE and is a visiting tutor at Nottingham Trent University and the University of Sheffield. She is the founder of ÉLLAA, a co-creative urbanism platform engaging with universities, various arts institutions and multidisciplinary creatives.