Arts & Fashion
8 February 2024
Grown by charity The Gaia Foundation, We Feed The UK is a storytelling campaign pairing photographers and poets with inspiring food producers.
These radical collaborations are raising awareness of the food system’s potential to positively address issues from climate change to social justice and nature restoration.
From 07 Feb to 14 March 2026, Primary will host a selection of work from this groundbreaking project as part of the long-term Nourishment Programme.
This iteration will feature four stories from across the UK, focusing on gender equality, climate change, racial justice, intergenerational connection and biodiversity.
What emerges from these encounters is unexpected. It is a gentle defiance against the dominant perspective of big agribusiness and a joyful celebration of working the land in a way that heals people and place.
With 75% of our isles tended as farmland, it is time for transformation. The regenerative practices celebrated in this exhibition, already thriving from fields to urban spaces, are the root of our future resilience.
Bringing the exhibition to Nottingham, these inspiring national stories will be connected with local projects working towards food justice and regenerative growing.
NO DIGGITY: KEEPING CARBON IN THE GROUND
Photography by Ayesha Jones in collaboration with Multistory
Poetry by Bohdan Piasecki in collaboration with Hot Poets
Inspired by No Diggity Gardens in the West Midlands
The Black Country’s identity was forged during the industrial revolution: her coal seams mined, her factories aflame, her skies heavy with soot.
Neville Portas founded No Diggity Gardens to spark a new kind of relationship with the land. From a legacy of extraction, he has kindled organic, zero-waste allotments now nourishing the earth in Walsall through no-dig gardening.
The community’s circular system of no-dig gardening, growing food and composting waste keeps No Diggity Gardens rolling. When that soil is left undug, carbon is kept in the ground, revealing the real value of the world beneath our feet.
Photography is by West Midlands artist Ayesha Jones, and poem ‘Again, Again’ by Birmingham-based Polish poet Bohdan Piasecki, winner of Britain’s biggest poetry award: The Forward Prize.
FOOD JUSTICE: SERVED FRESH FROM COMMUNITY FARMS
Photography by Arpita Shah in collaboration with Photo Fringe
Poetry by Zena Edwards in collaboration with Hot Poets
Inspired by Black Rootz and Go Grow With Love in London
Two growing projects are tending to injustices in the food system. Sandra Salazar D’eca founded Go Grow With Love in Tottenham and Enfield to support women of African and Caribbean heritage in nurturing a reciprocal relationship with local land. In doing so, they are increasing community resilience and food security in London.
In Haringey, Paulette Henry, Pamela Shor and their team are empowering communities to grow their own. Black Rootz is the UK’s first multigenerational, Black-led growing enterprise, reconnecting Londoners with seed, ancestral knowledge and earth.
This holistic approach cultivates more than crops; by rooting BPOC people to the land, Sandra, Paulette and Pamela are growing grassroots solutions for racial equality, land reparations and food sovereignty.
Photography by the acclaimed Arpita Shah reflects her own migratory experience in a series she has called ‘Sankofa’, while the poem ‘Tincture’ was written by African-Caribbean-British poet Zena Edwards.
CULTIVATING EQUALITY: WOMEN WORKING WITH LAND
Photography by Sophie Gerrard in collaboration with Street Level Photoworks
Poetry by Iona Lee in collaboration with Hot Poets
Inspired by Lauriston Agroecology Farm in Scotland
Sons inherit Scottish farms in 85% of cases, yet over half of UK family farm workers are women. The Scottish government’s own Women in Agriculture Taskforce concluded that their contribution can be ‘undervalued, downplayed or simply unseen’.
In Edinburgh, Lauriston Farm is run by a majority-women workers cooperative, who are drawing on the power of local people to restore a 100-acre urban growing site.
Across many Indigenous cultures, women were custodians of seed, farming and food before colonial, patriarchal and industrial domination pushed them to the field margins. It is from those verges that transformation stems, blooming beyond boundaries.
Sophie Gerrard’s photography will be exhibited alongside Iona Lee’s poem ‘Seed Kist’.
CUSTODIANS OF THE LAND: INTERGENERATIONAL NATURE RESTORATION
Photography by Andy Pilsbury in collaboration with Action for Conservation
Poetry by Ifor Ap Glyn in collaboration with Hot Poets
Inspired by The Penpont Project in Wales
The UK’s largest intergenerational nature restoration project began in Bannau Brycheiniog (the Brecon Beacons) in 2019. The Penpont Project’s custodians are a co-management council, comprising a Youth Leadership Group of 13- to 18-year-olds, farmers, landowners, the charity Action for Conservation and local people from artists to ecologists. The more-than-human beings of Penpont – whether otter or oak – are part of this partnership, too.
Through a multi-generational, multi-species exchange of knowledge, including the creation of ‘eco-cultural maps’, The Penpont Project’s participants have pieced together a picture of the natural and cultural diversity once sustained by these lands and waters. They have looked at present conditions with fresh eyes and made an ambitious, shared plan to restore nature in a way that celebrates Welsh farming traditions while opening the space to more young people.
Photography is by Portrait of Britain-nominated Andy Pilsbury, and poetry by former Welsh Poet Laureate Ifor ap Glyn.
GRAIN REBELS: A FOOD REVOLUTION STARTS WITH SEED
Poetry by Diz Undone (formally Dizraeli) in collaboration with Hot Poets
Inspired by Gothelney Farm and Field Bakery in Somerset
The world has lost 75% of plant genetic diversity since 1900 (FAO); diverse fields have been sacrificed for increased yields. In the foothills of the Quantocks, Fred Price is rediscovering diversity’s treasure trove of tricks by growing population wheats: coalitions of genetically distinct plants that rely on variation for resilience.
Fred’s grain is used by Rosy Benson for her on-site Field Bakery. Population wheat, fresh stone milling and fermentation are unearthing flavours and nutritional value missing from the refined flours extracted by industrial production.
Fred and Rosy form part of the UK Grain Lab, alongside Primary’s Small Food Bakery. Networks such as these play a key role in The Gaia Foundation Seed Sovereignty Programme, and are webbing up across the country in a powerful act of resistance and resilience, ensuring food sovereignty starts with seed.
‘Seeds’ poem by Bristol-based musician Diz Undone (formally Dizraeli) will be on display in the Small Food Bakery.
We Feed The UK is a major arts project pairing critically acclaimed photographers and poets with regenerative farmers, urban growers, sustainable fishers and grain rebels.
Grown by The Gaia Foundation with collaborators across the country, We Feed The UK brings together over 40 partners from the environment and arts sectors to tell 10 time-critical stories across urban, rural and coastal areas.
These stories have been exhibited in 10 regional exhibitions with 45 events and 250,000 attendees, and are gathered together in an award-winning book.
Primary is an artist-led contemporary visual arts organisation and charity housed in a characterful Grade II listed former school in Nottingham. Its mission is to commission, produce and present art exploring ideas that affect societal change.
The site and ethos create a unique environment for creative research, providing studios and strategic development for over 50 diverse artists alongside a free public programme of commissions, exhibitions and events.
As well as independent galleries there are outdoor and garden spaces, a bookshop and the award-winning Small Food Bakery.
The Gaia Foundation has 40 years of experience accompanying allies, communities and movements around the world to revive biocultural diversity. It takes a holistic approach to regenerate healthy ecosystems and strengthen community self-governance.
Together with partners from the Atlantic to the Arctic, Africa to the Amazon, Gaia is reweaving the basket of life, revalorising the knowledge systems that enhance it, and restoring a respectful relationship with the Earth.
Powerful photos & films about our planet to be exhibited at the Royal Geographical Society and Forestry England forests.
We spoke to two artists using their music to inspire positive action for the planet.
Artist Alexis Rockman shares the inspiration behind his iconic poster for the 55th Earth Day.
