Some resources on nettle fibre and fabric

Here's a film on processing nettle fibre for cloth,







and a book from Scotland on the same topic:

Birte Ford, Yarn from Wild Nettles

Videos on rope-making

Here are links to some interesting videos on rope-making:

1) Susan's film on The Art and Geometry of Rope-Making and Yarn Plying, made for the Bridges

Math and Art Conference short film festival, 2016. (By the way, Bridges is a great conference for those interested in math and any of the arts, and it will be in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada this July!)

2) Film on making rope from green grass collaboratively with a big group of people

3) Film on traditional (medieval-style) artisanal rope-making in Norway.

4)  Lime bast rope-making in Norway.

Please do fill in this simple feedback form about the workshop!

We presenters would really appreciate it if you could fill in the feedback form/ poll on our workshop linked here. It's great to get comments and suggestions that let us know what worked and what could be improved in future.  Thanks!

I am really excited about this blog. Thanks, Susan, for developing it.
Dilafruz

The place and the land where we are

The Orchard Garden (and all of the University of British Columbia) is on the traditional, ancestral

and unneeded territory of the hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓ speaking Musqueam people. Musqueam people have lived, and continue to live, on this land for the past 4000 years and more.

You can learn more about Musqueam culture, land, language and events from this site:

<http://www.musqueam.bc.ca>

Canada has recently completed a multi-year Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) national process into the horrors of the so-called Indian Residential School system, which had the explicit and shameful aim to separate Indigenous children from their culture, language, heritage and families. Judge Murray Sinclair of the TRC has recently named these policies and practices as attempted cultural genocide. You can learn more about the Residential Schools and the TRC here.

The truth is now clearly known, and reconciliation will take real and hard work by all Canadians over generations, starting now. You can read the TRC's 94 Calls to Action here. These are meant to be a positive starting point that every Canadian can begin to work on.

At the beginning of April 2017, a beautiful carved Reconciliation Pole was raised at UBC on Main Mall at Agronomy Road, a few blocks from the Orchard Garden. Here is a video of the pole raising ceremony. The head carver was 7idansuu (Edenshaw), James Hart, Haida master carver and hereditary chief, working with a team of younger carvers. One of the most moving images on the pole is the carving of a now-infamous residential school, with over 6,000 copper nails pounded in by residential school survivors. Each nail represents at least one child who died at these schools over their 150 year history up till 1996. Many of these children were buried in unmarked graves, far from home, without their parents knowing what had happened to them.

Indigenous peoples' well-being, languages and cultures are supposed to be a focus of a healing journey in Canada, but there is still a very real struggle against ignorance, stereotyping and racism that is just beginning here.

A bit of background on the UBC Orchard Garden

This teaching and learning garden is a student-led joint project of the UBC Faculty of Education,

Faculty of Land and Food Systems and School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture. It was originally established in 2005, and has been the site of classes, workshops, practica, research projects,  summer institutes, conference symposia and community engagement activities for over 500 people each year since 2010.

You can connect to the UBC Orchard Garden blog here, and follow our FaceBook page, Twitter account and Instagram account if you'd like to keep up with our doings! A 2017 fact sheet on the Orchard Garden is available here.

The Orchard Garden's educational mandate is to 'help teachers learn about teaching and learning across the curriculum with the garden as co-teacher'. We will soon be coming out with a website and book with our findings on ways of teaching every K-12 school subject, from history to math to music, poetry, astronomy, art, biology, food and nutrition, fibre arts and much more, in & with a learning garden.

Welcome to our interactive field trip to the UBC Orchard Garden!

A big welcome to everyone participating in the Children & Nature Network Conference 2017 field trip to the UBC Orchard Garden for our interactive workshop, Nature Connection Through Outdoor Learning Gardens for All: Diversity and Inclusion. Here is the program description of our workshop:

By their nature, gardens embody diversity. This field trip explores the cultural significance and value of learning gardens for diverse communities in restoring and reclaiming their physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health and resilience through stories, myths, nature connection, and practical examples. This on-site workshop will engage participants in dynamic, creative, community garden-based learning at the UBC Orchard Garden. Participants will leave with actionable strategies and inspiration for initiating community-collaborative, inclusive learning gardens. This workshop features garden researcher/practitioners bringing indigenous, multicultural, and urban perspectives from four different learning gardens in the Pacific Northwest. Participants will: (a) share cultural stories of hands-on engagement with garden-based learning; (b) practice the art of poem-making and cordage with the use of harvested site materials; and (c) use patterns from nature to capture permaculture-inspired wild design activities. Dress for the outdoors. An herbal tea will be served.

Four of us in garden-based learning from the Cascadia/ Pacific Northwest region are co-presenting this workshop on the afternoon of Wednesday, April 19: Marna Hauk, Dilafruz Williams and Judy Bluehorse Skelton from Portland, Oregon, and Susan Gerofsky from Vancouver, BC.  You can read our bios here.

Here is a map from the Westin Bayshore conference site to the Orchard Garden (at 261



3 West Mall, Vancouver, BC on the UBC campus).

Looking forward to meeting you and to an exciting workshop together!