Collective haiku workshop hosted @ Around A Tree 

This August (2024), I had a wonderful time working with Edinburgh Arts Festival, Más Arte Más Acción, and the Royal Botanic Garden of Edinburgh on the work, Around a Tree. 

The work Around a Tree, created by Más Arte Más Acción, a Colombian cultural foundation, is an artistic intervention of space in the form of a wooden circular table. The table surrounds a young Portuguese Oak standing at the center. This is meant to be a provocation: a meeting point and resting spot where people can sit and discuss or reflect on their relationship with plants in a time of rapid biodiversity loss. The wood used for the table was locally crafted from a Lebanese Cedar, planted in the garden over 200 years ago, that had to be felled due to disease—an issue relevant to the conversations held at the table.

I spent the month outside in all weather, engaging visitors with the work, by talking at the table about the interconnected existence of plants and people. The conversations ranged from memories of favorite trees and the people who loved them, home cooked meals, personal gardens, road trips, biodiversity loss, hope for the future, loss of local industry, fear, defeat, agency, play, and wonder. 

The breadth of storytelling and discussion was extensive, yet consistent in how each touched on themes of reciprocity and community. From these interactions, I wanted to engage with Around a Tree in a way that gave agency to these ideas. To do so, I hosted a collective haiku writing workshop as part of the closing ceremony, guided by Colombian environmentalist Brigitte Baptiste.

The haikus were written at the table by three different people, with each person contributing one line before passing it to the left for the next person to continue. At the end of the exercise, all the haikus were read aloud around the tree.

Furthermore, as published on the Edinburgh Arts Festival website, there will be ‘a soundscape, based on recordings made during the festival, building upon stops at botanical conferences including Ireland, Rwanda and Spain will be woven together by the artists to create a marathon of voices. This will be shared during the UN’s Biodiversity COP16 in Colombia in October, and the UN’s Climate COP30 in Brazil.’