For this second experimental wetland survey, we will practice presence as a gateway to ecological knowledge.

We will begin with a mindful observation workshop held by interdisciplinary ecologist Tyra Enchill. Guided by principles of mindfulness, we will turn our attention to living and nonliving entities, relationships and stories which form the Bethnal Green Nature Reserve’s ecosystem, asking how, and why, they may have come to be.

Tickets; www.eventbrite.co.uk

When; Sunday 30th October, 2:00 - 5:30pm

Where; Bethnal Green Nature Reserve

We are honoured to then be joined by environmental writer, Joanna Pocock, who will lead a writing workshop around the Ecology Pond. We will read and discuss some poems together, which can then be used as templates for creating word-based work about the nature reserve's pond. Participants will be invited to create and share their own poems about this vibrant habitat.

By prioritising depth and expansiveness of presence, we hope to make space for a slower and deeper awareness of this ecosystem through ‘being’ and the act of writing. These workshops will encourage us to hone and trust our observation skills whilst reclaiming ecology, the study of ‘the relations of organisms to one another and to their physical surroundings,’ as a realm of knowledges that can include the relational, experiential, and instinctual.

x5 (free) tickets available here -

*Joanna Pocock is a writer currently living in London. Surrender, her hybrid work of memoir and environmental writing, won the Fitzcarraldo Editions Essay Prize in 2018. In 2021 she was the Arts Foundation Environmental Writing Fellow and has recently been shortlisted for the Nature Chronicles Prize. She is an editor at the Dark Mountain Project and teaches Creative Writing at the University of the Arts, London.

Supported by the Bethnal Green Nature Reserve Trust + National Lottery Community Fund.

From Summer 2022 to Spring 2023, Edward Simpson & Tyra Enchill are developing a series of wetland ecology surveys in collaboration with friends and residents of the Bethnal Green Nature Reserve (both human and beyond). These surveys will investigate the complex array of lifeforms and relationships that are emerging in the new wetland.