Workshop Gestures of Care — The Politics of Radical Softness

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iniva together with Grand Junction, Climate Reframe, and artist Maymana Arefin, to present ‘Fruitings Will Come,’ a four-part workshop series taking place every Tuesday from 1 to 3 PM at Grand Junction.

The third session, Gestures of Care — The Politics of Radical Softness explores softness as resistance through rest and textile craft.

An embodied session that invites reflection on rest, resilience, and mutual support. Through shared dialogue, we will explore what it means to rest collectively and with intention; how acts of softness can become gestures of resistance and care. Using soft materials, participants will be invited to build gentle structures to rest upon, settling back-to-back to both offer and receive support.

Artist

Maymana Arefin (she/they) is an artist, community organiser and writer based in London. Through leading nature immersions, plant and fungi walks, her work centres deep rest, care work and restoring communion with our more-than-human kin. In 2020, Maymana founded @fungi.futures, a space to map radical alternative futures guided by the wisdom of mycelium. Maymana’s current practice responds to themes of ecological grief, embodiment and the power of collective imagining.

Collaborator

Hafsah Hafeji is a community horticulturalist whose work focuses on the relationship between people and plants. She is particularly fascinated by cultural, social, and economic factors that influence people’s thoughts of the living world around them. In her practice she explores this using nature’s colours, textures, and sounds.

Hafsah has also written in Gardeners World Magazine and various other publications as well as spoken at conferences and trainings covering topics such as nature education, rest in charitable work and advocating for community gardens.

She works for a city farm in east London, is a trustee for the Wildlife Gardening Forum and founder of a Muslim women’s gardening group in east London.

Accessibility

Participants with accessibility needs or allergens, please inform us through email: vasita@iniva.org