CONCRETE GARDEN: FERTILE GROUND

Barbican Conservatory, The City of London
Sunday 23 March 2025


Programme

12pm–1pm: Hackney Herbal Workshop* 

Garden Room 
Join Hackney Herbal to learn more about ecological gardening with a focus on urban spaces, covering the basics of growing plants in an eco-friendly way.

12.15pm–1pm: Jemma Foster – Dreaming with Plants  

Conservatory Well 
Be guided through the practice of dreaming and world building with the more-than-human at this ritual performance.  

1.15pm–2.15pm: Wild Alchemy Lab: Shared Horizons Workshop* 

Garden Room 
Investigate humanity’s relationship to ecological consciousness at this guided visualisation through a biotherapeutic soundscape, followed by a discussion and response session. 

2.30pm–3.30pm: 10 Years of Hackney Herbal* 

Garden Room 
Celebrating 10 years of work that has helped to shape community, join Hackney Herbal at this panel talk to discuss community herbalism and how it can help to nurture us collectively.  

3.40pm–4.55pm: WORMS at the Barbican – A Literary Ecosystem 

Conservatory Well 
Join a line-up of boundary-pushing writers, poets and thinkers as they burrow deep into language and unearth stories that tangle, twist and thrive in unexpected directions. With Zara Joan Miller, Rose Higham-Stainton, Jacqueline Ennis-Cole, Phoenix Yemi, Lu Rose Cunningham.

4.30pm–5pm: Slime Making Workshop* 

Garden Room 
Explore the art of making slime in preparation for Libby Heaney’s Entagled slimifications where you will bond with your slime over the course of the work. 

5.15pm–5.45pm:  Entangled Slimifications 

Conservatory Well 
Visual artist and PhD quantum physicist Libby Heaney will read a slippery stream of consciousness intertwining quantum phenomena and nature, inviting audiences to think about various entanglements through a common sliminess. The audience are invited to massage slime, while a layered video montage, edited using entanglement data from IBMs quantum computers, weaves connections between humans and non-humans. 

6.15pm–6.45pm: SEED Syllables 

Conservatory Well 
‘SEED syllables’ are sound symbols contained within mantras, which rather than having a literal meaning encompass the absolute as primordial cosmic vibrations; tapping beyond conceptual language, mantras are believed to protect the mind, germinating karmic seeds for evolution of consciousness.  

Marija Bozinovska Jones initiates chants in call and response towards cultivation of interbeing together with a Buddhist sangha community she regularly practices with. 

7pm–8pm: bones tan jones  

Conservatory Well 
bones tan jones presents their living praxis ‘optimystic dystopia’ as a spiritual practice. an eternal storyteller, alternative realities are explored through alter egos, retellings of ancient Chinese and Celtic mythologies through creating;  symphonies/operas/psalms/triptychs/sigils/stele/installations/interventions/inter-active workshops.  

Step inside our tropical oasis for a day of readings, talks and workshops on plants and fertile ground.

From discussions on allotments to Gaia theory and permaculture to DIY workshops on making your own plants grow, we look to the origins of life and how we look after it, all set within the living, breathing ecosystem of the Barbican's own conservatory. 

Join us for a day of pop up readings, talks and activations centred around the conditions of life. From workshops on compost to theories on Gaia and our beautiful blue planet, theorists, artists and collectives consider microbiology, anthropocentrism, animism, growth, land, gardening and the examination of cosmic interreliance. 

 We consider and respond to this cycle of give and take in relation to the earth's natural resources and present ideas from the hyperlocal to the global on strategies for care, community and climate awareness to nurture growth and sustainability.