Spring is bursting and our stomachs are rumbling. This time of year is traditionally one of scarcity in agriculture when stockpiles run out and new seedlings germinate ready for the season ahead. In the city, everything is waking up from hibernation, including many edible plants that in certain light are a most generous gift. In order to begin discovering these possible food sources, we need to develop observational skills to help recognise patterns, behaviours, and naming systems.

This workshop by artist, writer and forager Sean Roy Parker is both a slow observational walk and a series of writing exercises to foster an intimate connection with our interspecies neighbours in the urban environment.

After meeting at VOLT, we will spend about 1 hour walking before returning to the gallery to sit and write. Please bring a pen and pad, coat and water.

This is a free workshop, open to all who would like to join. No need to book, just turn up. Please contact Polly Wright with any questions about the workshop.

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Sean Roy Parker is a visual artist, writer and landworker who works open-endedly across many disciplines including sculpture, installation, foraging, cooking, publishing, workshops and community gardening.

Parker practises slow, low-tech crafts and food preservation with consumer waste and wild abundance, and shares extensively through labour exchange, favours and artswaps. Against the backdrop of the climate crisis and class division, he challenges the received understanding of what constitutes artistic production through his process-led and (re)generative practice. Under the name Fermental Health, he writes about material lifecycles, interspecies intimacy and collaborative problem-solving through the lens of food justice. In the spirit of degrowth much of his work gets eaten, composted or repurposed.

Recent solo works include Man of Kent, Piccalilli Gallery, London (2024); With Us All, a permanent public sculpture in St Raph’s Edible Garden, London (2023); and The Beans, Two Queens, Leicester (2023). He was a Wysing Arts Centre resident 2023–24, and is a recipient of the Axisweb Fellowship bursary 2024.

Parker's debut poetry collection, ​‘stewarding’, published by Monitor Books, London is available from our bookshop.

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This workshop is part of The Reason for Flowers, a group exhibition considering flowers as motif, material, symbol and subject, bringing together emerging and established artists who live and work on the South Coast or have long-term connections with the area.