Learning Circles #5 & 6 reflections



This was perhaps our most complex pilot study, in terms of the concerns about pollution in the garden, which is situated near to the Edmonton incinerator and North Circular, and in terms of our relationships with garden members, their relationships with each other, and our shifting capacities over the course of the project, which delayed the delivery of this pilot. These layers of complexity impacted our ability to carry out the tests we had proposed, gather questions and get to know the soil and community here. However, it also pushed us to do lots of extra testing, research and thinking about what we are doing, learning and offering; drawing us into spaces of conflict, grief, self doubt and collective reflection.


We learnt earlier this year that Rebecca Maguire, who we had mostly been liaising with about Angel gardens, had unexpectedly and tragically died at the end of 2023. We were shocked and saddened to hear of her passing, as we’d been moved by her energy, passion and gentleness, and felt supported by her in the short time we’d known her. Rebecca’s friend and fellow community gardener Aurora was the one to reach out to ask if we could still deliver the pilot in honour of Rebecca and her commitment to this project. We agreed to run two workshops instead of one, and to try and put together a workshop outline that would allow us to go a bit deeper, to connect, and listen to sounds and stories from the garden, as well as explore a long list of potential pollutants from nearby and historic industries.


When we first met Rebecca and Sara online to discuss the key questions and aims of this pilot (see report), Sara asked if there were soil datasets available that she could look at, as she is a data analyst. We asked a soil ecologist about what data is already out there, and were told that generally there is not enough up to date knowledge or data on how soil contamination works, which is a major barrier to having a more strategic soil use strategy and monitoring framework like there is for water and air. More available soil data could lead to litigations over past use, and raise land use and ownership issues. Without data being available, it becomes very difficult to hold any individual or organisation to account, and to make policy on how to care for and monitor soil. Evidence tends to be regional, anecdotal or on a case by case basis. He told us that access to low cost testing is ‘the only way’ to challenge these blockages. It struck me how the lack of transparency and cost of soil testing and knowledge is tied up with private land ownership, corporate/ institutional power and enclosure - which assumes that soil pollution and contamination are private matters that do not concern the general public… Creating an open source soil pollution map of London, is one of the original and ongoing aspirations for this project.


The lack of available data and expense of testing, was what brought the members of Angel Gardens to apply to be one of our pilot sites. Their focus had mostly been on air pollution, and they’d previously applied for a grant to buy an air pollution sensor for the garden, but had not been successful. Aurora shared her research with us on air and soil pollution near incinerators in Italy and the UK, which spoke about how “puzzling levels of dioxins” were found near to UK incinerators in a soil pollution study in 2007, but that no further testing had been done since. I got this feeling that community members were having to feel around in the dark, to piece together evidence from other places and times, in order to make sense of what might be happening in their context. The stakes for this project were therefore quite high! And we really wanted to do a good job.


A few days before the workshop, Aurora let Hari know that there had been some conflict between garden members, and that no one had been able to access the garden yet this year. We talked a bit about toxicity, and its material, social and relational manifestations in community spaces and projects, and how the skills to respond to and transform this are rare. How does the possibility of toxicity in the soil impact or get reflected in power dynamics and relationships between people on the land? 


“We are part of the soil food web: with our fellow earthlings we have the capacity to shred, turn, digest, build, make, break down, terraform and care for soil and organic matter. Together we are soil, we are matter passing through.” 

(Compost Mentis Manifesto)


Aurora reflected on how Rebecca had been one of those rare skillful people who could navigate complexity and messyness, making her absence ever more felt. We hoped that the workshop might be able to bring people together again in some small way.


“I felt a heaviness in the garden when I arrived there, after so many months of hearing about and imagining the space - I realised that I / we had no real connection to it, or the community here, in contrast to most of the other spaces we have worked with. The paths and beds were overgrown with weeds, reflecting the lack of community access as a result of the conflict #readtheweeds! Garden members started to arrive, but there was a tension and sadness that came with them. Sara had made a giant feast, which she laid out on the table, whilst others got to work setting up a gazebo, moving garden furniture and watering plants. A couple of beds had been cultivated by the key holder, and we selected 4 different areas to test: a sandy area near the road, a bed overgrown with Herb Robert, a raised bed growing corn, and soil under apple trees at the back of the garden.” (Hari)

We had been planning this workshop with Aurora, Michelle, Hari and Elena, - and we’d devised a multi-dimensional session which involved grounding, checking in, reading, deep listening, touching the soil, observing and reflecting together on a range of different soil testing methods. We’d done lots of research to prepare for the session about how different pollutants move into and through soil. The session didn’t quite go as we’d planned! For reasons we will try to capture below….

  • We started late, as people arrived at different times. Some participants were unclear about what the workshop was, so we had to keep explaining why we were there - which meant the introduction was drawn out and a bit clunky.
  • We invited everyone to check in and share their relationship with the garden/soil - there were lots of rich stories shared (summarised in our report), which really helped our understanding, but we got the sense that people became frustrated whilst listening to each other, maybe because of the tensions present?
  • Hari noticed (too late) that the challenge of facilitating a group they didn’t know who were in conflict, was beyond their skill level and capacity as a facilitator.
  • Grounding, listening and reading exercises were not possible to do because people struggled to engage
  • Workshop participants wanted answers and results, and were less willing to engage in the process of finding out. Perhaps there was a desire for a more professionalised / technical lab service than what we could offer. At the same time there was an understandable frustration when we used technical or scientific terms.
  • Hari lost the trust of participants, by not being able to facilitate the introduction clearly enough. We were asked many questions, including if we were from the council. 
  • Elena felt that we were being constantly tested, getting sudden requests that didn’t acknowledge the limited time to put together something meaningful. We presented what the clinic and the workshop were about, yet this was not acknowledged in the tone of the requests. There was a voracious appetite for results but little willingness to listen that brought a major dissonance in a process that had to be hurried, and with a lot of quick reactions.
  • Due to the low trust and impatience with our approach, it felt difficult to fully explain and enact our Caring and Courageous Spaces policy, and gather feedback at the end, even though it was probably needed here more than ever. We have since circulated an online feedback form and are awaiting responses.
  • The arrival of food was a lovely touch, but not part of the original workshop plan, so taking time to eat meant that our schedule went out the window, and we ran over time, creating further tension.
  • As some of the equipment we brought is a bit fragile (especially the pH monitor), it felt harder to fully involve the group in the testing in the ways we usually do.
  • A physical fight broke out outside the garden’s gates during the workshop, which unsettled people and interrupted the closing and summarising of findings.
  • Elena was not feeling well, and Hari and Elena  both felt overwhelmed by the complexities causing them to disassociate and struggle to keep track of time. Michele was able to remain cool, calm and reassuring to the end.
  • “I was dealing with inflammation and some weakness and dizziness after being on antibiotics treatment. The frustration of the garden dynamic was then brought into our workshop, there was little awareness of each other's time and needs, questions about highly technical concepts that would require extra time to dissect, interruptions of the group processes to clarify personal constraints. These questions often interrupted a group activity or discussion, which required an extra effort to cater the group momentum without being rude to the people interrupting. This drained a lot of energy and reduced my ability to react and adapt. There were people coming and going from the activities, making questions of parts of the process that we put together while they were away, some other members were just listening from afar doing some gardening without directly engaging. It was quite confusing, it seemed as if there was a need to reassure individual presences and needs.” (Elena)


Despite our plan going off kilter, it wasn’t a total disaster, and some of the things that worked were:

  • Garden members opting to be together (instead of participating in the activities), eat and chat, this is probably more what was needed.
  • Michelle's listening activity (using contact mics to listen to movements and sounds in the soil) was a nice way to engage younger participants individually. Some nice descriptions of sounds emerged, which we later made into a sound poem (below) 

  • We were intrigued by the different stories about the origins of the soil in the raised beds. One person told us authoritatively that it had been taken from the site. Whilst others were sure it was imported from somewhere else. The soil texture in the raised and ground level beds appears very similar from our testing.

  • The listening activity revealed the presence / history of some underground aqueduct or nearby watercourse? Participants reported the sounds of “dripping”, “waterfalls”, “gushing” etc… (see sound poem). It could have been the hose (!) but it could have also been the sounds of subterranean water flowing… a glance at googlemaps does show a nearby unnamed watercourse, and some cursory research into London’s Lost Rivers, suggests this could be a tributary of Pymmes Brook or Salmons Brook, which are both tributaries of the nearby River Lea.




About Interrupted Waterfall (a sound poem)



  • pH testing is simple but gives very reliable readings, and useful indications about the presence / mobility of lead, aluminium and zinc, amongst other heavy metals.
  • The nutrient tests in combination with contaminant tests gave us some interesting results due to the relationship between phosphorus, lead and aluminium.
  • Understanding the soil type and structure was helpful for analysing how moisture, oxygen, nutrients and contaminants may be moving through the soil
  • The testing we did carry out suggested that there were no significant concentrations of Lead, Aluminium, copper, zinc, or arsenic - which surprised and pleased garden members.
  • Through continuing the testing at home, we generated a lot of different results (for texture, structure and biology), and a comprehensive list of recommendations (see report), which Aurora felt could be of use to the garden.



Analysis and Learnings…


The garden’s proximity to polluting infrastructures such as the Edmonton incinerator and North Circular has resulted in varying levels of anxiety about the likely presence of pollutants. This, coupled with reports from garden members of feeling deprioritised by the council, and like they ‘don’t matter’, created an emotional landscape that was quite palpable, and may well feed into the conflict that is playing out between community members. A couple of participants spoke about the high levels of deprivation in the neighbourhood, the inequality, poverty and street violence. This contributed to a feeling of scarcity amongst garden members, who are fighting over who gets to have access to this space, when and how. It felt very unfair, that this small triangle of land must be shared between all these people, who have different needs, interests and values. Hari later reflected on the giant allotment site that they have access to in neighbouring Barnet (where mostly very privileged community members are also engaged in bitter conflicts and power struggles), and the huge unjust inequality between these sites. Conflict is sadly, more and more common across London’s growing projects, as growers, organisers and workers in this sector, we meet this a lot, and see it as a symptom of colonial inheritances, unjust distributions of land, wealth and power, and the loss of skills and knowledge of effective community organising. These systemic oppressions screw us all over, and massively impede our ability to care for the land and each other. We found out after the workshop that the key holder had been angry about us using the space, and wanted us to pay. This suggests that, within contexts where there is scarcity, and the stakes are high - our offering may be of less value.  We reflected later in our organising circle that we had felt like what we had brought was “not enough” - pushing us to spend many extra hours working on a detailed report and preparing for our online follow up session (Learning Circle #6), which only one person showed up to…

The question about values feels important to reflect upon, and takes us back to the decision we made before embarking on this pilot project, to work with spaces that were most aligned with, and practicing our values. In the pilot call out we asked: 

“In what ways has your group acted in alignment with our values? (Please demonstrate with policies, examples, etc.)”

Though, at the time of completing the form in May 2023, with Rebecca’s involvement, Angel gardens may have been more aligned with our values; and had volunteered their space to be part of the pilot. By the time we got there, regrettably one year later, it no longer was. Power and access had become concentrated, inequalities weren’t being addressed and the community was fragmented. Hari and Naomi reflected on this later, and in some ways felt affirmed, that our policy of only working with groups who shared our values with, was correct (for the pilot stage of this project at least) enabling us to focus our limited energies on methods and learning, rather than navigating differences and organisational rifts - perhaps this was why the previous pilots went comparably well?… On the other hand, we see the flaws in this approach. It reduces the potential of this project to resource and collaborate with groups facing multiple intersecting oppressions, who may not have had access to the same political education as us, or express their values in the same ways. Perhaps we need to get better at working with people who don’t agree with us, for the revolution? This will be something to reflect on further when we reach the end of the project, in relation to our core values of social justice, land justice, soil justice, food justice, racial justice, disability justice and tackling the root causes of oppression. 

In previous entries we have celebrated and acknowledged complexity as part of our pedagogy. However - what happens when things become too complicated? And our capacities to respond and hold space are reduced? How do we continue to build our collective skills to hold more and more challenging complexities? And what do we do when/ if we reach our limits?

In many ways, the workshop plan we developed for Angel Gardens, attempted to integrate the learning from previous pilots, but to little avail. This leads us to conclude that, what works in one garden, won’t necessarily work in another, so perhaps our hope of developing a singular approach / set of methods is naive. Rather than seeking to develop a “one size fits all” methodology (as many professional labs would do), we need to understand how the different methods available to us work, when and how to use them in different contexts. We need to be able to make boundaries around what we can and can’t offer, and to manage expectations responsibly. At the same time, we need to leave space for emergence and adaptation - to be able to meet communities where they are at, and not be too rigid with our plans, echoing adrienne maree brown’s call for “less prep, more presence”.







“For the workshop, Hari prepared a reading from the book Inflamed. While I was dealing with physical inflammation myself during the workshop, I understood the inflammation of the garden members, their need to be heard before being able to listen and engage. In my case, the inflammation ceased after a few weeks, could there be forms of engaging that gives room to inflammation? How can care and time take place in these processes? and what is our role as facilitators of the pilots? Angel Gardens pilot showed what is needed rather than showing us what works.” (Elena)


In our final online session, Aurora shared her worry and sadness that “the garden is dying”. The conflict had impacted people’s ability to be able to respond to each other and show up. Aurora likened the community’s exhaustion to the slow moving nematodes we had watched under the microscope >>>





A final question we are left with is around how this project can better resource communities who are doing important things to challenge and disrupt the land and wealth inequalities which oppress us all in different ways? Offering free or low cost testing does feel like one valuable offering, but as we learnt at Angel, it is perhaps not always enough for communities facing wider challenges. The question of repair, remediation and healing has been put forward at previous learning circles as something that the soil clinic could/should also offer - taking a holistic approach to soil pollution and recognising the ways it may show up in our food, bodies, emotions, relationships and communities. The text we had planned to read as an opening to the workshop from Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice (see excerpt below), offers a powerful analysis of the connections between inflamed ecologies, economies, bodies and societies, along with a prescription for what we must do to heal on a systemic level.

“For every example of colonial inflammation, we offer deep medicine, ways of thinking through how we might find one another through the work of decolonising and through building communities of care”.

(Marya & Patel 2022: 27)




References


https://www.thameswater.co.uk/media-library/home/about-us/responsibility/thames-days-out/sites/heritage/new-river-path-leaflet.pdf


A New Life for London’s Lost Rivers


Inflamed: Deep medicine and the anatomy of Injustice by Raj Patel and Rupa Marya


Emergent Strategy by adrienne maree brown 


UK soil & herbage pollutant survey



by Hari and Elena