Description:

For the last couple of years, we have experienced periods of living at home in terms of inclusion, which turned it into a host for all our activities. The home-factory creates new practices and habits, our home culture changes. This gives the opportunity to trace but also to invent living practices with self-action, solidarity and sharing of knowledge and materials among the inhabitants. The “agro-urban” environment of Volos provides a suitable ground to combine urban life with agricultural practices.

The “Urban Gardening” workshop, opened a discussion field on the subject of our relationship with the plant world, cultivation and feeding and at the same time evolving cultivation and gardening practices. The  workshop gave the opportunity to participants to discuss and produce new plant microenvironments in the open space area of the Department of Architecture of University of Thessaly, or even in participants’ house yards. The ambition was at the end of the workshop to form an ethos of production and not just consumption, for the formation of the house and the metabolism of home / urban life.

Workshop programme

Does the seed make the tree or the tree the seed?

In this workshop, we tried to observe and feel the cycle of nature (sowing – cultivation – harvesting – exchange/consumption – storage/preservation and from the beginning again). How we ourselves are part of these alternations and how we can create an urban / home garden. Every day we will start with a little theory and continue with cultivation activities. The program included a series of short lectures, documentaries and audiovisual material, on-site activities and practices, walks and visits.

 

DAY1:

In the beginning, was it the soil?
Lecture:Our raw material, a living organism. We see it, smell it, study it, work it, use it.
Action: Preparation of soil for sowing, at a selected point in the open space area of the campus. Construction of a compost bin.

(#soil_types, #soil_health, #on-site_search, #ground_cover, #compostation)

DAY 2 :

Or was the seed in the beginning?
Lecture: Seed / sperm / fruit / core or database. This tiny unit that carries a huge amount of information is (also) our food. Sowing as resistance, circularity and seasons: cultivation-collection- exchange-planting.
Action: We will make our own seed starter units. We will plant in the area we prepared the day before.
(#seed_types, #plantings, #field_sowing, #preservation_techniques, #zapatistas)

DAY 3:

Or was it water in the beginning?
Lecture: Water and constructions. Ways and techniques of watering. Patents and improvisation. The gardener as a bricoleur.
Action: We became bricoleurs ourselves and walk in the nearby area to collect raw materials for the construction of the garden. We will return to the campus and experiment in agricultural constructions, with the materials we gathered.
(#water, #watering, #construction, #bricolage)

DAYE 4:

Let’s see how they do it.
Lecture: Issues of self-sufficiency, resistance and peaceful disobedience.
Action: Visit to urban gardens of Volos under the guidance of Thalia Marou. Discussion and exchange of knowledge with urban farmers.
(#urban_gardeners, #urban_garden, # self-sufficiency)

DAY 5:

Final “taratajum” ritual.
The closing ceremony. We planted trees on campus. Cooking and transforming energy. Collective cuisine and feast. Live music with traditional instruments (bagpipe, drum) from the youth band “Yunive Nive”.

Trainers: Electra Naoum, Tasos Makris, Eleni Diamantouli
Advisors: Zissis Kotionis, Phoebe Giannisi, Alexandros Psychoulis

*Νο participation fee.
*The workshop was open to OPEN UP to participants of any age (18+) and no prior knowledge or ability is required.
*Travel and accommodation expenses were covered by the Open Up project.