Growing Riversiders is a part-digital part-physical participatory project involving 100 families from a new urban development in London – Barking Riverside collaboratively growing a large-scale plant-based installation that represents their collective identity for the new neighbourhood.
Interested to host the project? Visit thegrowingassembly.lingql.com to find out more.
100 families (Plant Parents) coordinated online using the Growing Riversiders platform and then spent 6 weeks growing and nurturing 400 plants in their homes and together. Once ready, they assembled a spectacular community-created image artwork at Barking Riverside that ‘grows’ and ‘thrives’ for months to come.
The image was chosen by Plant Parents from a selection designed by a group of local community champions, with the winner being the depiction of a Honey Bee made up of 400 pixels of colors. Each pixel is made of a plant taken care of by a Plant Parent over the 6 weeks period, and the 4 plant types making up the artwork were collectively chosen by the local community with advice from a local plant expert.
Watch The Making of The Image & Artwork
Over a weekend in the summer, they came together to assemble an enormous image, now installed as a large flowerbed at the Wilds Ecology Centre at Barking Riverside.
Developed during the COVID pandemic, the project took place both remotely and in person. The local community champions used a custom Growing Riversiders digital web platform to design the image. Participants collected plants that corresponded to the image’s pixels and during the 6-week growing phase, Plant Parents were each given a unique web link to the custom web platform that enabled them to keep in touch with each other, share growing tips and experiences, and record how their plants grew into ‘pixels’ of the final Honey Bee image through regular plant photo uploads.
Below is a video of a run through of the web platform showing the various resources that Plant Parents have access to during the growing phase
Tailored weekly text messages, emails, and growing tips were also sent out through the platform to keep Plant Parents updated on the growth of the artwork and also provided them with useful growing tips that were based on the weather forecast for each week.
The project challenges the assumption of neutrality & primacy of digital pixels. Participants design digitally & bring the pixels to life by growing plants under different home conditions and contexts. It creates a new aesthetic that blends the digital back into the physical world where people are losing connection with in pandemic.
The artwork opened to the public as part of the official opening of the Wilds, a new ecology centre at Barking Riverside. It continued to grow in place for a few months, enabling residents of Barking Riverside to see the artwork blossom, acting as a symbol of community spirit, before being brought back home by its Plant Parents to care for permanently.
Feedback
“Growing the plants at home was a great experience, just having them around, seeing them grow, and we have this community online where we can grow together, share a few tips, knowing that some people are going through the exact same thing and having the support of the plant expert to understand how to better take care of the plants that I can apply to other plants, its just great!”
– Julian Minuzzi, A Plant Parent from Barking Riverside
“Not only do you get to be a plant parent to take care of something, but you are not doing it alone, its like part of something bigger, part of a community, everybody is coming together to create something beautiful, I just love the idea.”
– Sheena Vella, A Plant Parent from Barking Riverside
“It’s been amazing how well people have looked after their plants, and so to have that partnership with Ling and for her to provide so much structure to what is untested has been a really great experience.”
– Sarah McCready, Head of Placemaking and Communications at Barking Riverside Limited
“It exemplifies the type of work that we want to do with the people of Barking Riverside. It’s a project that’s being owned by local people, they help design and grow the artwork, and it’s just so great to see them coming back together to create their own art installation. ”
– Ella Rodwell, Design and Planning Manager at Barking Riverside Limited
“I just moved to the neighbourhood, didn’t know many people, this is a way of getting to know them. Also this is quite an unusual interesting project, never being a part of anything like that before!”
– A Plant Parent
“It’s been a great experience, i don’t grow plants in my balcony, but i have been wanting to have more plants at home and this is the first time I’m tending to some, and this project just shows that I have the discipline to do it.”
– A Plant Parent
Special thanks to:
All our wonderful project champions and Plant Parents who made this all possible!
Matthew Sims from Barking Riverside Limited
Kate Turner and Harriet Stevens from Faust PR
Shane Moore from Acre Landscape
Jack Addis from Lumen Art Projects
This project has been commissioned by Barking Riverside Limited, delivered in partnership with Lumen Art Projects, Acre Landscapes, and Creative and Barking Dagenham.
