In collaboration with Compost Mentis Coop & Shared Assets
This project will provide for a soil care clinic which will offer free and low cost soil testing for growers, community gardeners and anyone with an interest in caring for their local environment. There will be a mobile and drop-in space where people can connect, share skills, learn together about soil health, and make use of microscopes and soil chemistry tests. Using data about soil biology, nutrient content and potential pollutants, visitors to the clinic will be supported to take action on helping their soils and communities to thrive.
The core values of this project are rooted in a commitment to landscape justice, and deepening understanding and caring relationships between people, land, soil and ecology. Through regular learning circles, they will share a diversity of knowledge practices relating to soil, attending to the ways that knowledge and power are unequally distributed between institutions and communities of soil-carers.
The project will focus on facilitating bi-monthly ‘learning circles’ over the course of a year. This will be an open space to grow the collective through knowledge exchange, conversation and skillshares. The ultimate research output, will be the creation of the UK’s first community scale soil care clinic, offering a hub for further learning, meetings, exhibitions, workshops, testing and care.