Our first workshop was on October 14th, 2018.
We met at Morden with Ian Solomon-Kawall, founder of May Project Gardens. During this first workshop we shared food that was kindly served by Ian while he shared some of his experiences and how do this project started.Â
As he explained, May Garden Projects was created with the main purpose to enhance connection between people and nature in order to work in harmony with the land. It was important to have a positive effect on people by introducing gardening, farming and food organic production and to engage people with green spaces. As one way to approach this connection, May Garden Projects added hip hop music as an alternative for education and empowerment, specially for young generations.They work with students, communities and urban spaces in order to not only send positive message but to create awareness about the environment, food and education. Â
Cooperation, collaboration, unity are some of their main values or their mottos as Ian said. MGP tries to promote collectiveness, connection with culture, garden and music in order to create a different flow of energy between humans.
After he talked a little bit of his background, his story and the creation of this great project; Ian took us to the garden where it all started everything. Despite the gloomy and rainy weather, we look around all the vegetables they have growth in the most organic way, from cucumbers to basil and tomatoes and even chillis. Ian explained us the process of making compost and using it for the garden as well as the water systems in order to use carefully the water for this. The garden was the live expression of the project with a variety of plants, flowers and organic vegetables. Even at the corner of this big green space, there was an eco-friendly cozy room made by waste and organic material.
Later on, Ian showed us his private studio where he keeps a huge collection of music records from classics of Reggae to Hip-Hop and even some Jazz oldies. One of the highlights of this rooms is the massive collage of pictures, newspapers pieces, posters and line ups he has saved from all the people he have been working around thanks to this project and to the hip hop. Despite the small space of the room, you could feel the vibe and the essence of Ian through every wall: art, music, pictures with his mom (whom was a big inspiration for him to create this project), paintings, records, some equipment do record music. Every corner hides a e like the quote of an African Proverb:
"When you are at home, your troubles can never defeat you".
To end the session, Ian asked us to write about what we had learned, about the experience of being in contact with the nature, walking around the garden and looking around the studio. He even put some music in the background to get us inspired and creative. Some of us came with different ideas from our ancestors and how our ancient culture communities used to work in harmony with the soil per se and lived in peace with the nature; some others came across with the idea of how much it has changed the way we connect between each other and with nature nowadays and other ones made a reflection about hunger, food scarcity, identity, how food and belonging were intertwined. It was interesting and enriching to see our standpoints from each one of us about the same experience.
On our first meeting not only we left with new questions about food processing, how do we keep our habits in a postmodern and fast paced world, how are we forgetting to connect between us and more questions. We came back home with a task to make a piece either a poem, a writing, even a song with all the ideas that each one wrote down. Our first workshop was full of food, fantastic company, experiences and a vibe of togetherness between the group.
