Hedgerow Syrup

An invitation to Ekho Woods for Reclaiming Our Roots sessions

Reclaiming Our Roots is an experimental and creative community (re)connection experience designed by Time Rebel Deb McDonald, in collaboration with her fellow Director of Ekho Collective, Clare Evans, and herbalist, teacher, artist and author Amaia Dadachanji. Taking place outdoors, in a small area of woodland at the edges of Hawbush Community Gardens, the sessions layer nature connection with story sharing, hands on making and food sharing around a campfire.

Reclaiming Our Roots was developed in response to an invitation from CoLab Dudley for Time Rebels to help bring the Dudley Creates 100 year strategy in action to life and ensure that people get to have a say in the types of culture and creativity they’d like to take part in. Funding from Arts Council England has been made available to Time Rebels during 2023 for continued live testing of ideas and the development of projects that look to the future and are co-created with local people. 

Below are photos and reflections by CoLab Dudley team member Lorna Prescott following a Reclaiming Our Roots session she participated in at the end of August. Lorna has then related Deb, Clare and Amaia’s intentions with key ideas in Dudley Creates: a 100 year cultural strategy in action for Dudley borough. 

Amaia preparing for the session in the roundhouse

I arrived a little earlier than everyone else, and was delighted to have my first experience of stepping into the shelter provided by the stunning roundhouse which was constructed in Ekho Woods this spring. The thought, preparation and care which is being invested in these sessions was evident in the arrangement of seating with blankets available, beautiful table displays, hand drawn recipes, craft areas and a small fire pit already crackling. Although August, it was a rather cool, overcast day. 

Recipe and ingredients for Hedgerow Syrup

The inclusive welcome and care flowed through as participants arrived. Some of us came along solo, then a group of women of different generations from Lye arrived together with convenors of Diyya, a local charity who promote social inclusion for women and families marginalised as a result of gender, race or ethnicity. An overview of the session and a reminder of staying safe on the site was shared and translated. Then another group of people who had travelled by bus from Dudley arrived together; creative newcomers who come together at weekly Walk and Draw sessions which local migrant and refugee services signpost into. 

The five pathways to nature connection, from bit.ly/NatureConnectionHandbook

In no time at all, the session was helping us to connect with nature through our senses. We were given small samples of syrups to taste, and asked to share what sensations arose when we drank it and where in the body we felt those things. Amaia recorded words we used and mapped experiences onto a drawing of a person. Ingredients for the Hedgrow Syrup we would be making were passed around, with the stunning pink echinacia flowers drawing a lot of curiosity to the touch. Futher nature connection occurred as we shared stories of how we used cinnamon, the different names of the spices in different languages, where we’d recently seen ripe elderberries in the places we live. 

Mixing ingredients for Hedgerow Syrup — I didn’t know you could put entire flowers in like this!

We then dispersed across the site to tables where we could separate elderberries from their stalks, using a nifty little tool: a fork! 🍴

This part of the session was great for connecting, you couldn’t help but end up chatting when you found yourself standing side by side pushing berries into the same bowl. It was great to see people moving around, taking turns to prepare the elderberries, sharing more stories of fruits and spices, and simply having some time to chat, whether to a friend or a stranger. 

The colours! (Black elderberries, lilac echinachia petals and red rosehip berries in a large steel pan)

Once all the ingredients were in the pan and on the fire, we were all invited to another tasting; of the fire cider which had been made at the previous session. Again Amaia recorded and mapped our feedback, challenging as it was by this point with 40 or more people who were animated, continuing conversations and curious about everything we were being introduced to.

Hedgerow syrup ingredients cooking in a steel pan over an open fire

Amazingly to me, the syrup was made in time for corns, sweet potato and plantain that participants had brought to be put on the fire. Stories of food, people’s homelands and communities continued to be shared, along with samosas and breads that women had brought along. 

You can see gorgeous photos and video shorts from the session on Ekho Collective’s Instagram. 

Strategy in Action

As the CoLab Dudley team researched and crafted Dudley Creates: a 100 year strategy in action for Dudley Borough, we draw out 5 key ideas which we felt offered powerful practices, tools and tactics to help overcome barriers experienced by local people and communities who would like thriving cultural lives. They are:

• putting relationships first; taking a network approach

• inviting everyone to decide what counts as culture, where it happens, who makes it, and who experiences it; this is called cultural democracy

• paying close attention to ever-changing and entangled relationships — thinking in terms of a cultural ecosystem

• imagining, growing, living and celebrating stories of wonder and future possibilities; using collective imagination to release us from the status quo

• expanding our horizons to consider the rest of nature and future generations in our cultural work; developing long term thinking.

A network approach

Deb is a born network weaver! Taking a network approach through Reclaiming our Roots came naturally. It was undertaken with care; an initial Reclaiming our Roots session was organised specifically for Time Rebels that Deb has been getting to know, along with a few other key collaborators. This was to test out the session design and invite constructive feedback so that the sessions with local people were designed with input from a range of perspectives. Warm invitations were extended to people who convene groups that Ekho Collective particularly wanted to bring into this work, including Creart-Collective, a Walk and Draw group bringing together newcomers to the UK, and Diyya, a group of women from Lye. A few others in Ekho Collective’s network showed interest too, and all were welcomed and had time in the sessions to get to know each other. 

Cultural democracy

An initial consideration for Reclaiming our Roots, as described in the proposal for the project, was around models of land use and relationships to the natural ecosystem. The project sought to bring an exploration of decolonisation, translocation of elders from ancestral lands and the resulting generational loss of cultural practices and knowledge. This would be achieved through convening in ways which are informed by local knowledge, stories, cultural spaces, histories and futures; fostering equity of cultural opportunity .

Cultural ecosystem

This project was the first opportunity Ekho Collective had to work with Amaia Dadachanji in Brierley Hill, thus initiating a new collaboration between artists and creatives who bring different knowledges and practices. Reclaiming our Roots sessions took place in a small patch of woodland at the edge of a community gardens on Hawbush estate in Brierley Hill. Thus making a non arts space into a place of cultural production, and taking a place based focus in relation to the land the sessions were on and the lands participants came from. Deb drew attention in her proposal to the disparity of access to green spaces that negatively impacts people from diverse ethnic backgrounds, leading to limited nature connection and the evidenced, health protective benefits.

Collective Imagination

Reclaiming our Roots sessions certainly bring together many of the ingredients which help us to imagine. Some of these are brought together on Rob Shorter’s Imagination Sundial, which we’ve included in our Dudley Creates Navigation Guide. In particular I witnessed the ingredients for mental and emotional space to imagine; through the welcome, slowingdown, care and safety, and permission to experiment. Also in really wonderful ways, invitations to connect to and expand our awareness of others, the natural world and and stories from past generations. 

Long term thinking

During the Reclaiming our Roots session Amaia shared folk wisdom and stories from the past, and I felt that the act of making these long used recipes invited new ways of thinking about what’s possible in the future; ways that we could better understand what the land around us offers. 

Finally, for anyone who would like it, here is Amaia’s Hedgrow Syrup recipe. The session gave me the confidence to try this at home before just before it was too late to harvest elder berries from my garden. The cordial is delicious 😋

This post also is also being shared on Dudley CVS’s website blog pages and CoLab Dudley’s Lab Notes publication in Medium.