April 2nd | 6:30pm - 8:30pm at Carnegie Library Hub
LION are really happy to be collaborating with long time friend and comrade Dre Ferdinand on a series of community care workshops over the year for Black and People of Colour.
Our first event is on Tuesday 2nd April from 6:30pm to 8:30pm at Carnegie Library Hub. During the first series of Fallow, you are invited to explore ways to reconnect with the land and its healing energies through a guided soil meditation. This is a practice that involves connecting deeply with the earth and its energies through mindfulness, contemplation, and sensory awareness. Unlike traditional meditation practices that often focus on internal experiences or mental states, soil meditation centers around the physical presence of the soil and the profound connection between humans and the earth. It is a reflective practice that honour ancestral knowledge, challenge colonial legacies, and promote radical solidarity that contribute to the broader movement for social and environmental transformation. This is an immersive experience and invited to get dirty.
We are centring BPOC “Earthworkers”. This can include herbalists, growers and foresters, fisherfolk, conservationists, nature-connectors and so on. We also want to prioritise organisers in climate, food, land and racial justice and anyone who organises in these intersections and more. And more than anything, we welcome anyone who is interested in connecting to the land (earth, water, air), to food and farming and the ways that they all intersect with racial justice - which if you support/follow us - you probably are!
Dre Ferdinand is a licensed social worker, artist and therapist, whose practices include movement, energy, sound, soil, and EMDR, a modality that has informed her approach which she refers to as ‘MESSE’. Dre’s practice framework is rooted in healing, social and restorative justice. Her professional journey involves aiding individuals and communities in processing and recovering from systemic harm and trauma as well as advocating for therapeutic support for social workers. Her teachings are centred on helping people navigate their internal landscape, collective care, and processing trauma. You can contact Dre at hello@dreferdinand.com or @idreferdi
Land In Our Names is a grassroots collective of Black and People of Colour getting land through reparations. Our collective is based in London, Britain, and works to reconnect Black and People of Colour to land, both in the city and in the countryside. Our work addresses the inequalities in access to land and food, and reimagines land stewardship towards climate and racial justice. We are organising toward collective ownership and land stewardship by Black and People of Colour, to heal the colonial-rooted trauma that has separated us and continues to extract from the land.
Fallow
Fallow is a series of community care workshops integrating the healing and repair element of Land In Our Names’ aims and values into our work. We believe that there is a deep need for accessible healing spaces for Black and People of Colour (BPOC) landworkers and earthworkers, climate, food, farming, land and racial justice organisers. Moreover, it is vital to connect this work to land and food, in particular political understandings of land and food that are rooted in ancestral, anti-colonial, and radical practices. We see collective care as essential in supporting food growers and other landworkers who experience physical and mental burnout from low wages and intensive physical labour. It is important for social justice organisers who similarly struggle with low wages, long hours and demanding work.