This day of interactive, exploratory learning invited five leading practitioners  – artists, makers, writers, land guardians and natural builders - to facilitate workshops tracing how everyday resources fuelled unequal colonial trades between the islands of the UK and the Caribbean. Together, we explored how four key minerals and plants have shaped our material world, from the food we eat to the buildings we make. We also reflected on the journeys of these materials, which involved fractured communities, disrupted ecosystems, and colonial trade routes that have shaped how we relate to the spaces and places we inhabit.

Through practical making, grounding exercises, and reflective discussions, we worked with our bodies and our minds to imagine and inhabit future worlds in which these relationships and processes are reconfigured. With Sam Siva, we explored the sugar trade routes from the Caribbean to the UK and the effects of the plantation logics on the way we live our lives today. Through the radical act of creative writing, we imagined an optimistic and regenerative future. Alongside Resolve Collective, we explored the potential of circular economies in this build workshop at Resolve Collective's flagship 'Material Store' rememebring the legacies of that timber has historically been extracted from the Caribbean after the UK's own timber resources were depleted.  With Annabel Cameron-Duff, we learned about the use of clay in the UK and took part in a practical workshop understanding the natural building technique of clay plastering (using a mix of clay, sand and plant fibres). Whilst with Mollie McMillen, wove with natural fibres, reflecting on the epic distance that banana fruits travel from to become an everyday staple in our lives.

This day was supported by the re:arc institute.