A hyper-local resource designed to support budget friendly, nutritious cooking and platform the diversity of planting, growing and cooking knowledge in Cliftonville West.

Polly Brannan, Keely Burrows, Kat Cutler-MacKenzie, George Harding, Vlasta Hozova, Aaron McKay and Despacito Art School
Publication

Growing Wild: Foraging, Cooking and Pickling from Cliftonville West is a hyper-local resource co-designed with local residents to support budget friendly, nutritious cooking and platform the diversity of planting, growing and cooking knowledge in the area.

Recipes were collected at the mobile growing unit as part of pop-up workshops led by OSE’s Artistic Director Polly Brannan and Community Cook Keely Burrows, as well as from Despacito Art School families. Keely also contributed her own recipes and foraging tips, whilst OSE Community Gardener Aaron McKay shared tips on small-scale, urban growing and resilient gardening.

Growing Wild was translated from English into Czech and Slovak by OSE Community Support Facilitator and long-term member of Despacito Art School Vlasta Hozova. 

Typography for the pamphlet was co-designed by Despacito Art School with Polly and OSE’s in-house graphic designer George Harding.

All recipes can be made with ingredients from the OSE Community Allotment Planters, kindly hosted by Ethel-Athel Alleyway Garden and maintained by Aaron with support from local resident H.

Polly Brannan is Artistic Director at Open School East. She is a social practice artist and educator who has produced projects at Serpentine Galleries, The Barbican, Tate Britain, Frieze Art Fair, Lisbon Experimenta Festival and Nottingham Contemporary, amongst others. Polly’s work is temporary and live, often staged in transient spaces and engaged in co-development through long-term working with local communities and authorities. To work in these settings and engage non-art audiences she has spent the last 20 years developing and learning from existing roaming and DIY approaches, such as mobile working units, poster making, community-led publishing and more, tools that enable her to build relationships with communities at a hyper-local level. Her work has a continued focus on improving access to green space, protecting spaces for vital services, and supporting the development of advisory groups to enable local residents to lobby for change. 

Keely Burrows is a community-focused gardener and cook with a passion for urban gardening and improving access to locally foraged & seasonal food. My background as a chef and amateur gardener has inspired me to explore the connection between growing and preparing food in sustainable, accessible ways. I enjoy sharing practical skills, encouraging people to connect with nature, and using food and gardening to bring communities together while promoting wellbeing and environmental awareness.

Aaron McKay is a gardener and Forest School teacher based in Ramsgate, Kent, with a specialism in child-led and outdoor learning. Aaron oversees OSE’s allotment planters at Ethel-Athel Alleway Garden. He has previously worked with grassroots, neurodivergent play charity See Me Play at The Garden Gate Project, and with Open School East’s Despacito Art School as part of the programme cycle Home is where the garden is.

This Civic Programme event is part of OSE’s two-year thematic cycle Home is where the garden is – find more events: openschooleast.org/home-is-civic