SEEDS OF HOPE

As Scotland’s major contribution to the UNBOXED programme of creativity and innovation across the UK in 2022, Ailsa Sheldon explores Dandelion, a project aiming to flower as a celebration of culture, arts, community and food

Adandelion is a symbol of resilience. A hardy wildflower which can flourish and grow anywhere: in depleted soil, in cracked pavements, in gardens that nobody thought to plant. In 2022, we can expect to find Dandelion in bloom all over Scotland as an expansive arts and growing project that spans cultures and generations, hoping to bring the joy of growing, community and music to as many people as possible. Among other aims, Dandelion will reimagine the cultural traditions of Harvest and include the largest citizen science experiment in Scottish history.

Following one growing season from April to September, Dandelion will bring together musicians, scientists, technologists, artists, performers, school children and growers of all levels of experience and none. From remote islands and rural villages to city centres, Dandelion aims to be ‘a gift for Scotland’. The project plans to engage thousands of people in traditional and cutting-edge food-growing techniques, and inspire new music and art, culminating in hundreds of community harvest events across Scotland, as well as two large free festivals of food and music in Glasgow and Inverness.

At the core of Dandelion is community; people coming together to grow and share food, ideas, music and new experiences. There’s a lot to learn: how will we feed ourselves in the future, will vertical gardening be the answer, can anywhere be a growing space, and who is going to do the growing? Part celebration, part experiment, Dandelion is a six-month long conversation about food in Scotland and everyone’s invited to get their hands dirty.

Dandelion is in part inspired by the different approaches to community that blossomed during the pandemic, as well as a desire to forge deeper connections. For some, lockdowns were a chance to get more involved in local communities, focus on our immediate environs and perhaps meet our neighbours. For others, it was a time of deep isolation. During lockdown, Angus Farquhar, creative director of Dandelion, and former director of Public Art Collective NVA,

launched a hyper-local project in Glasgow called An Empty Gunny Bag Cannot Stand. Brightly coloured hessian sacks were distributed across Kelvinhaugh and Kelvindale, along with seed potatoes, soil and growing advice and support. This humble, easy-to-grow staple was soon flourishing on front steps, sparking conversations and new friendships. It inspired a community festival at SWG3, where the growers came together to celebrate with a harvest feast and great music. The seed for Dandelion had been planted. Could this joyful growing experience be replicated across the country?

Dandelion will see ‘Unexpected Gardens’ pop up across Scotland, taking over unused spaces in partnership with community organisations. Each garden will exhibit touring vertical growing cubes, or Cubes of Perpetual Light, to grow herbs and vegetables. The cubes have integrated speaker systems which will showcase new music from Scottish and international composers and perhaps discover if plants, like us, respond positively to music. There will be Unexpected Gardens in Caithness, Ross, Moray, Uist, Dundee, Edinburgh, Falkirk, Scottish Borders, Dumfries & Galloway, Inverclyde, Argyll & Bute and Fife, as well as a ‘floating garden’ based in Falkirk that will tour the canal network. Each garden will have an emerging creative producer and a musician in residence, helping to plan special events, installations, family activities, music commissions and site-specific community harvest events.

The citizen science continues with an ambitious schools project, giving 500 schools access to growing cubes, to get young people growing, experimenting and tasting what they grow. Schools will also get stuck into the Big Tattie Experiment, growing tatties anywhere and everywhere and reporting on their results.

Professor Fiona Burnett of Scotland’s Rural College (SRUC) is leading the growing and science aspects of the Dandelion project, along with colleagues and a ‘Tattie Team’ of SRUC agriculture students who will help advise community growers. ‘Growing food fairly and sustainably is so important, and the challenges are huge,’ says Professor Burnett. ‘This is a chance to really connect people to how their food is grown and let them experience it in meaningful ways, and to come back to the joyful aspects of growing and celebrating a harvest and linking it to our heritage. I think that’s amazing.’

Benita Rajania, product director at Liberty Produce who are creating the ‘vertical farm’ growing cubes, believes Dandelion will be a vital chance to find out what growing is possible in different locations and with diverse groups of people. ‘These problems aren’t going to solve themselves,’ says Rajania. ‘You need children to be engaged, you need communities to be engaged in this process, and care and understand where their food comes from.’ She hopes the project will encourage young people to explore careers in plant sciences and agriculture.

On every level, Dandelion aims to engage, encourage and inspire, with the most visually striking element of the project likely to be the Pavilions of Perpetual Light – a 10 metre-high vertical farm, part art installation, part concert platform. In Glasgow for midsummer and Inverness in September for harvest, this will be the stage for a day-long music festival, featuring new music commissions, international and Scottish artists programmed by Donald Shaw of Celtic Connections, seeds and plants for audiences to take home and plenty of food to share. n dandelion.scot

Left to right: One of Dandelion’s ‘Cubes of Perpetual Light’ mini-vertical farms; Dandelion team members joined by local growers 19