Number of participants: 4
Location: Learning Grounds garden @ de Zandweg allotment garden, Rotterdam South
Date: October 4th, 2025
Duration: 11:00 – 17:00 (11 am – 5 pm)
“What we pay attention to grows”
—adrienne maree brown, writer and activist
Ingredients: Freshly harvested Raramuri pumpkin grown from a gifted seed, bran, dried leaves, used coffee grounds, fermented nettle juice, fermented garlic, sea water, rain water, brown rice vinegar, worm castings, decaying compost, indigenous microorganisms cultivated from soil next to the plum tree, dried hay, rice, milk, raw sugar, wind storm, rain shower, sunshine, a story about land destruction and ecocide in Gaza, a prayer to the harvest that cannot happen in Gaza this year, a story about co-regulation and building collective solidarity, plastic tarp, bucket, rope, paper, drawing and writing materials.
Soft Score
BEGIN
11:00
Welcome and introduction.
Checking in.
Share topic, agenda and aim for the day.
Introduction to group agreements.
11:15
Optimal breathing, an invitation to visualize and ground oneself in the garden’s infrastructures and how they might offer support, to feel into what is currently not supporting the people and the land in Gaza.
HARVESTING GRIEF CIRCLE
11:30
Read out loud a 2025 report on land destruction, displacement, starvation, environmental warfare and ecocide in Gaza as written by UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food Michael Fakri.
CIRCLE(continued)
An invitation to share what is present in the group when reading the news or anything else that is arising.
Write a collective text about feeling into devastation and cultivating supportive relations by entering a space of caring.
[bio break, tea break, fruit break]
BUILDING SOIL, BUILDING SOLIDARITY
13:30 Together make a soil amendment using locally sourced ingredients, coffee grounds, bran, dried leaves, rain water, sea water, decaying compost, fermented nettle, fermented garlic, lacto-acid bacillus cultivated from rice and milk, indigenous microorganisms harvested from the soil next to the plum tree, that will help feed the soil for future harvests.
Share stories about the gifts, histories, and knowledges of each ingredient.
Smell the ingredients, touch the ingredients while mixing.
Cover the mixture with dried hay harvested from the canal bank nearby.
[The mixture will be laid to rest for three days and cannot go above 50C otherwise the heat will kill the indigenous microorganisms]
Recount the role of co-regulation in building healthy, resilient solidarity movements, and in preventing burnout and apathy.
Offer a prayer to the people in Gaza, to the harvest that cannot happen this year in Gaza and to future harvests.
PREPARING A MEAL, EATING, DIGESTING
15:00
Harvest ingredients for a meal from the garden.
Use similar ingredients from the soil mixture, garlic, milk, rice, nettles, sea salt, raw sugar, to prepare the meal for the human bodies assembled for today’s gathering.
With the harvested ingredients, prepare a meal together using a Palestinian recipe.
16:00
Eat a meal prepared by the group.
Last reflection round, what is the group taking with them, what do they offer to others and the planet, what are they hopeful for, what support will they connect with after they leave the garden.
16:45
Checking in.
One somatic gesture of how each person is leaving the space.
END
