From its inception in the dark days of pandemic lockdown to its current set of thriving local initiatives, Wild Hive Ecological Educational Collective is going from strength to strength. In the first of this series, Founder Jo Hutchison describes how she envisioned and developed Wild Hive.
Find out about the Wild Hive outreach projects here. Discover here how Wild Hive is helping to grow a new HCF team: GreenTeam@HCF.
Cast your minds back to the darker days of lockdown, and you’ll remember how fortunate many of us felt to have the sanctuary of Highbridge Community Farm; the space to draw breath while the children roamed freely; and the reassurance of knowing that we could access the food we were still growing together (albeit, at a social distance). At a time when we were learning new ways to connect with each other, many people were also finding comfort in a renewed connectedness with nature. As the pace of life slowed, and the man-made noise quietened, nature found its voice. And we started to listen.
Inspiration for a local future
Like many others, I sought to counter the troubling daily news briefings with podcasts that offered hope and inspiration. It was during one of my ‘hour-a-day’ walks around our local neighbourhood, that I heard Helena Norberg-Hodge, founder of Local Futures, sharing her thoughts about a localised future – where most of our food comes from nearby farmers to ensure food security year round; and money circulates in the local economy to grow prosperity. A localised future where, essentially, we take stock of the wealth of skills and assets we have, and connect them together to re-discover ways to live more lightly and in harmony with nature and each other.
If this interview and the Local Futures film, ‘The Economics of Happiness’ sowed the seed for a grass-roots initiative in my mind, it was the energy from Pam Warhurst (founder of Incredible Edible), the pragmatism of Transition Network (remembering how Eastleigh Transition Network had conceived Highbridge Community Farm), and ultimately, the lockdown TED talk from Transition founder, Rob Hopkins, that gave me the fresh perspectives I needed for my wilder ideas to germinate.
Time to outreach community farming?
With the clarity that came from those solitary walks, I thought hard about what it was that had enabled Highbridge Community Farm to thrive for over a decade. Struck by the abandoned school fields and empty growing beds, I contemplated how school grounds could become the sustainable and bio-diverse National Education Nature Park that the Department for Education was calling for, whilst serving the immediate needs of the children – many of whom were struggling with their mental health due to the disruption to their education. I started dreaming up various ways we could potentially take community farming to the community.
There and then.
Here and now.
Could a combination of stakeholdership rather than voluntary helpers, and time-slotted year-round access to shared ‘Education/Community Farms’ on the edge of school grounds or educational sites, enable many more members of our local community to enjoy the same benefits as our Highbridge Community Farm stakeholders do?
Why, I wondered, when so many were having to stay home to school, and too many didn’t have gardens of their own, weren’t the turfed (or plastic-grassed) school fields being transformed into educational food forests, or flourishing outdoor nature-classrooms? Surely, it was more critical then than ever to be passing on the practical growing skills our young people would need for such an uncertain future?
As pressures continued to mount to agree, let alone reach, essential Net Zero targets, wasn’t it imperative that we proactively encouraged the next generation to take one of the most positive environmental actions of all – to grow the means to capture carbon, whilst growing healthy food; increasing biodiversity; protecting nature; and helping to reduce the carbon emissions that are ‘wrapped into’ the food that is transported from further afield?
From “What if?” to “What next?”
In the spirit of Transition founder, Rob Hopkins’, profound question “From What If To What Next?”, I asked myself:
- What positive social and environmental impacts would be felt if we created the conditions for climate literacy to be deeply understood through its practice, and the savouring of resulting ‘riches’; as opposed to majoring on the theory, with the risk of focussing on what we as humans might be denied if we are to live more sustainably?
- What if we turned the fear and uncertainty on its head, and instead took the nourishing aspects of community farming into our schools and neighbourhood growing spaces, and encouraged more ecological and regenerative growing practices?
- What if we harvested the wealth of skills and expertise accumulated in our community farm, and shared it with larger cohorts and diverse groups of people ‘on their doorsteps’?
- Could we help create a cultural shift towards ‘active hope’ and optimism if we listened to, learned from and involved young people in the creation of more shared and “wildly abundant” local landscapes (“wildly abundant” being my, then 7-year old, son’s words)?
- What if we simply taught more children how to grow and make a bowl of nourishing soup? What ripple effects might be felt throughout our local community?
Extending the Community Farm objectives
As the lockdowns of 2020 continued into 2021, and life became more precious and precarious than ever, it felt imperative that we reconsider ways to approach educational and community growing projects and efforts. With the help of HCF’s Steve Grundy, we put out a survey to all the Farm stakeholders to gauge whether they felt the Farm was still meeting its original objectives and to see what appetite there was for more educational outreach. (You can see the results of the survey here.)
Informed by some of these responses, gradually the aims of our Wild Hive Ecological Education Collective took root in my mind – to do whatever we could to engage, enthuse and enable even more local growing and/or access to locally grown food (on whatever scale) – to improve health and wellbeing; to support nature (including ourselves) and ultimately, to protect our planet. Correlating our aims and the objectives of Highbridge Community Farm led us to being an offshoot initiative rather than simply part of the farm.
Fortunately, some other farm stakeholders shared my view and helped to get Wild Hive off the ground.
So, that was then, and this is now!
Becoming Wild Hive
Since Autumn 2021, we have grown from a handful of pioneering ‘farm-hands’ and educators, keen to develop the idea of educational outreach from Highbridge Community Farm, into a growing collective of passionate people, committed to turning our numerous ideas for a ‘greener, brighter future for all’ into reality.
Using Looby Macnamara’s ‘People in Permaculture’ design web, I started to design the Wild Hive Collective that was gradually taking shape. Here you can see the summary that I presented for my Children in Permaculture Design Certificate:
Within our core team, we now have myself, the original Courgette Team Leader at HCF, with a background in Communications & Community Engagement; Lizzie Dunn, an RHS trained Horticulturist, Landscape Manager and School Grounds Guru; Claire Clarke, an Ecologist and fellow HCF ‘old-timer’; Dedj Liebrandt, a Medical Herbalist with a desire to educate others; and Rachel Carey, an Education Consultant and School Green Team Champion.
In Autumn 2022, we registered as a Community Interest Company in order for our enterprise itself to become sustainable.
Since then, we’ve been working hard to build a network of collaborators, supporters, and local educational and community garden sites and to develop our educational outreach initiative.
Discover our projects
Find out more about our Wild Hive projects in the next blog in this series. Discover here how Wild Hive is going back where it all started to grow a new team at Highbridge Community Farm – the Green Team@HCF.
Get involved
If you’re interested to get involved, find Wild Hive on Facebook and Instagram, email wildhivecollective@gmail.com, or fill in this form.