Seed Pod is a social sculpture and publication devised by artist Joshua Bilton in collaboration with children from Ferry Lane School in Tottenham. Its purpose is to create a space for communities to creatively engage with nature, ritual, ecology and animism.
Seed Pod is inspired by the stories of 23 year 4 children. Over a period of two years, through workshops, and walks along the canal, the children have grown stories of transformation into plants, trees, water, birds and seeds. Storytelling has become their way of reflecting on the very universal themes of nurture, protection, loss and love; and water has been adopted as a threshold space between real and imaginary worlds. In these worlds separated by a thin surface of water, the children have grown their words, wishes and offerings and cast them into the water in the shape of a small ceramic seed.
The Seed Pod social sculpture and publication is part of the Hinterlands arts programme being delivered between 2019 and 2022. Conceived by Canal & River Trust and led by Creative Producer Clare Moloney, Hinterlands is an arts programme designed to engage people in a creative exploration of the Lee Navigation in Enfield and Tottenham. Through artist collaborations with local primary schools, theatre performances and a heritage app/digital artwork designed by young people, Hinterlands aims to reactivate the canal as a vibrant community art space and promote greater community cohesion and wellbeing.
Video by Charlotte Ginsborg
Markfield Park, Tottenham Hale, London, 24th October 2021. Devised in collaboration with dancer and choreographer Daisy May Kemp.
Photography by Eva Louisa Jonas
‘Water Offering’ marked the end of a two year collaborative project with Ferry Lane Primary School. Gathering collectively with the local community we shared stories that the children had written and invited participants to imagine themselves transforming into water. Through writing, movement, shaping clay into seed offerings and making ad-vows to give to water, participants connected to the ancient history of this site as a place of ritual.
Unfired / The movement of water erodes each clay seed to sediment / Resting with ancient, ah-hoc vows and votive offerings given to water.
Seed Pod is a social sculpture and publication devised by artist Joshua Bilton in collaboration with children from Ferry Lane School in Tottenham. Its purpose is to create a space for communities to creatively engage with nature, ritual, ecology and animism.
Seed Pod is inspired by the stories of 23 year 4 children. Over a period of two years, through workshops, and walks along the canal, the children have grown stories of transformation into plants, trees, water, birds and seeds. Storytelling has become their way of reflecting on the very universal themes of nurture, protection, loss and love; and water has been adopted as a threshold space between real and imaginary worlds. In these worlds separated by a thin surface of water, the children have grown their words, wishes and offerings and cast them into the water in the shape of a small ceramic seed.
The Seed Pod social sculpture and publication is part of the Hinterlands arts programme being delivered between 2019 and 2022. Conceived by Canal & River Trust and led by Creative Producer Clare Moloney, Hinterlands is an arts programme designed to engage people in a creative exploration of the Lee Navigation in Enfield and Tottenham. Through artist collaborations with local primary schools, theatre performances and a heritage app/digital artwork designed by young people, Hinterlands aims to reactivate the canal as a vibrant community art space and promote greater community cohesion and wellbeing.
Video footage by Charlotte Ginsborg, edit by Joshua Bilton. Sound playing during workshop from the vinyl Water Memory / Mount Vision by Emily A. Sprague.
16mm video footage, movement and choreography by Daisy May Kemp
Enclosed in this box are the stories, poems, wishes and offerings of 23 children from Ferry Lane Primary School. Their stories are accompanied by 23 Earthstone seeds. Placed between the pages of their stories are self-guided nature activities, polaroids documenting performances and workshops, guided water rituals and a seed saving storage area.
There are now plans to develop the Seed Pod Box as an educational nature resource and distribute this amongst schools throughout Enfield.
Words, drawings and photographs by Maisa, Taybah, Kevin, Jashuwanth, Alan, Layla, Alicja, Faiz, Taylan, Isaac, Aida, Ruby, Trinity, Qian, Hafsa, Gift, Mathew, Bawan, Sibel, Robin, Aaron, Andrea, Aaliyah and Joshua Bilton.
Over a period of two years, I ran workshops with 23 children from Ferry Lane School in Tottenham Hale. Through writing and performative workshops, the children connected to traditions of storytelling and ritual in response to the canal and waterways behind their school. Walking in the natural environment close to their school they were encouraged to imagine themselves transforming into plants, trees, water, birds and seeds. These were then collected into a series of poems that collectively reflected on water as a threshold space between real and imaginary worlds.
Photography by Eva Louisa Jonas
23 hand gestures in the shape of seeds
