Last August, I attended the World Soil Science Congress in Glasgow. The venue and the scale made it hard to negotiate, but the difficult ground it covered was even more of a challenge to think through.
I attended during an artist’s residency with the World Soil Museum (NL) while planning events with Our Living Soil in Amsterdam. I welcomed the company of members of the Crichton Carbon Centre (soil scientist Anna Basley and socio-ecological artist Kerry Morrison, Peatland Connections Project officer) and Alice Smits from Zone2Source. Our conversations revolved around what creative approaches might contribute.
“Along with fascinating research and presentations, attending the Congress highlighted many gaps: gaps in knowledge and gaps in action. Gaps are exciting spaces as they are spaces of opportunity. This is something creative practice could and should help negotiate.” Kerry Morrison ‘Soil Science – crossing boundaries’.
For a fuller version, follow this link to my Online Talk for the World Soil Day Zoom Roundtable hosted by the World Soil Museum and Crichton Carbon Centre, December 5th 2022.
The Congress arts programme was loosely convened under the banner Our Living Soil, which created spaces for people to reflect, and perhaps work out a way to proceed. The images below include a meal by Dish the Dirt, the Soil and Soul podcasts by Propagate, and We are Compost / Composting the We at the CCA in Glasgow.
I recall a subdued feeling as the Congress finished and people drifted away through the concrete plaza. Perhaps the hectic purposefulness in the venue had kept emotions at arms’ length. I had heard frustration within the congress about getting industry to change practices and politicians to change policy. Given the contemporary desperate situation, soil scientists may reach out to arts and social sciences as a way of communicating. Getting to know about the interdisciplinary work of members of the Soil Care Network was an inspiration.
The artists’ contributions seemed to me to be self-seeded on wilder ground at the Congress peripheries. I think the art projects pointed to ways of engaging more diverse communities beyond the institutional frameworks. Artists can improvise ways for people to work together. I was happy that Propagate’s collective project working with local soils and communities was chosen to receive the small pot of arts-funding within the Congress. For me, their activity was in the kernel of the congress.
So what is Propagate growing this year? For one thing, it is part of a wider Scottish campaign for a Wellbeing Economy whose statement frames the demand that the economy be re-programmed.
‘our planet and society are creaking at the seams. We’re joining 200+ organisations in calling on the [Scottish] First Minister to urgently reprogram our economy so the well-being of people and planet comes first.‘
At the 2022 Glasgow World Soil Science Congress, art and community projects were inserted into the venue’s fringes by commitment, imagination and (too often) unpaid work. How could this be different within a wellbeing economy, where rhetoric turned into reality? Maybe a future Congress could find a way to support local regenerative hubs; inclusive partnerships that extend beyond an intensive and short period of scientific exchange.
Sincere thanks to the World Soil Museum, Zone2Source and Crichton Carbon Centre. Opinions and reflections are my own.
peat cultures 