To celebrate the launch of 'This Allotment: Stories of Growing, Eating and Nurturing', the book’s editor, Sarah Rigby, will be joined in conversation by allotment historian JC Niala, chef Olia Hercules and writer Kirsteen McNish.
An allotment. A ‘10 pole’ space for the growing of fruit and vegetables. A health-giving, heart-filling miniature kingdom of carrots, courgettes and callaloo. A microcosm for our societies at large as people claim their ‘patch’ and guard it fiercely, but also of welcoming arms, gifted gluts and new recipes from across the seas.
They are places of resilience, resistance and freedom. They are blowsy dahlias, cricket on the radio, buzzing bees and the wisdom of weeds and seeds. This Allotment: Stories of Growing, Eating and Nurturing brings together twelve vibrant pieces from gardeners, food writers, novelists, horticulturalists, and historians in a glorious celebration of these entirely unique spaces: plots that mean so much more than the soil upon which they sit.
Why not stay for dinner and treat yourself to our award-winning Garden Café? We recommend pre-booking a table to guarantee your space.
Speakers
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Sarah Rigby
Sarah Rigby
Sarah Rigby is an editor, publisher and book coach, and publishing director at the vibrant independent Elliott & Thompson. She has published some of the country’s best-loved and award-winning writers of nature and place, including Nancy Campbell, Rob Cowen and James Aldred. Originally from Yorkshire, she lives in London with her family where she shares an allotment with her friend Viv and volunteers for Organic Lea, a workers’ co-operative and community food growing project on the edge of Epping Forest.
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Kirsteen McNish
Kirsteen McNish
Kirsteen McNish is a writer whose creative work intersects with people, place, landscape and unusual settings, as well as encompassing caring and lesser-heard voices through the prism of the natural world. Kirsteen writes a regular column for Caught by the River and contributes to Hole & Corner among other publications.
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Olia Hercules
Olia Hercules
Olia Hercules is a British Ukrainian cookbook author, chef and activist. She has written four cookbooks, including award-winning Mamushka, which has been translated into eleven languages. Her third cookbook Summer Kitchens documents Ukrainian regional cuisine and preservation traditions. She is a co-founder of the movement Cook For Ukraine, which has helped to raise over £2 million to help those affected by the war in Ukraine. Olia lives in London with her husband Joe and two young sons. She continues writing and raising awareness about Ukrainian culture.
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JC Niala
JC Niala
JC Niala is an allotment historian and writer with a passion for exploring the intersection of nature, culture, and community through the lens of allotments. Her doctoral research included 36 months of research on allotments and urban gardening sites in Oxford. Through this, she conceptualised allotments as banal utopias, everyday sanctuaries where people collaboratively craft paradise with nature. She was awarded the Social History Society Public History Prize in 2022 for the recreation of an allotment in the style of the year 1918 which culminated in site events, exhibitions and the publication of an artists journal of poems ‘Portal: 1918 Allotment’. Her 2023 project is ‘The Waiting List’ - a collaboration between her artists collective and Greenpeace. Following conducting Freedom of Information requests to councils nationwide, they unveiled a massive allotment-sized artwork crafted from seed paper, stating: 'We the 174,183 on the waiting list demand allotments.' This was performed at the Department of Levelling Up, drawing attention to the lengthy waiting lists and illuminating the potential of allotments to sustain urban populations.
